a hill-ish life

A Blue State Girl

2008-11-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

It's official. North Carolina has gone for Obama. And I have moved from what was, as of yesterday, the only other state still too close to call but leaning red (that's Missouri, for those who haven't been following) to the one that leaned all the way blue for the first time since 1976.

Finally, disbelieving friends, do you believe me when I say I don't live in the Appalacia of Dorothea Lange photographs and moonshine stills defended with shotguns and raw-boned hound dogs?

After a year in Asheville, I was much less surprised by the election results than the Obama organizers sent in from sophisticated climes like Washington, D.C., and New York (home to many of those friends who still say, "You moved to North Carolina?" in a tone that suggests I am a hair's breadth away from committing child abuse for taking my son here). I had suspected all along that these poor souls who saw nothing more of Asheville than the inside of an office located next to Bojangles were under the delusion that the people pouring in to help with phone banks and canvassing and, yes, poll watching were the dedicated few liberals hiding out in our homes sandwiched between gun-toting hunters who might not have seen a moose in these parts but could bond with someone who shoots them from airplanes nonetheless.

Thus, when the news broke yesterday one of the Obama organizers in charge of us poll watchers sent us an email admitting that they had expected far more problems than they had encountered on Election Day. Indeed, during the poll watching training I heard about voting machines "incorrectly calibrated" so that a punch for Obama somehow landed in the McCain box. The New York Times ran a story in which a West Virginia voter recounted hitting the Obama box on the touch screen machine and watching his vote jump to McCain; the poll workers, he said, advised him to keep hitting his choice until, after a sufficient number of times, it stuck where he put it. We were on alert for long lines created by insufficient ballots, workers, or machines and designed to discourage voters in precincts that could be counted on to vote Democrat.

Given these dire possibilities and how hard it would be to snatch North Carolina from McCain, I fully expected to be assigned as a poll watcher to some precinct outside of Asheville, somewhere I have yet to discover that looks more like the place my L.A. friends think I moved to when I told them I was relocating to North Carolina. Instead, I was assigned to a precinct in West Asheville -- a part of town I associate with the most progressive, most hipster, most non-North Carolinian area around.

Hmm, I thought. I guess the Obama people know something I don't know.

And so I showed up at 6:15, already vigilantly looking for signs that the polls wouldn't open on time at 6:30. Workers ready? Check. Plenty of ballots? Check. Lines out the door and down the block? Um, no. Just six or eight people who had heard the same predictions of hours-long waits as I and who were also discovering the power of early voting. Turns out, I stood on line two weeks ago for a lot longer than anyone waited in this precinct on Election Day.

I took my place behind the poll workers, trying not to hover because -- despite the task I was taking on and the law degree that qualified me to do so, I really do hate confrontation -- but striving to be close enough to hear the challenges they might make to people's right to vote. Knowing that at least one of the three precinct judges had to be a Republican, I was on the lookout for that moment when I would step in, liberal legal credentials flying, Obama-issued handbook at the ready, to enforce the law.

Why was that precinct judge having such a hard time with those two students' registration? Why was the chief precinct judge spending so much time on the phone with the County Board of Elections, and what information was she giving the voters having trouble receiving their ballots?

It took me less than an hour to figure out that those students got to vote. And that chief precinct judge? She was on the phone transferring voters into our precinct when she could and encouraging those she couldn't transfer to go to their correct precinct to vote instead of casting a provisional ballot that may well not be counted. She was, in fact, so impressively doing all the right things that I told her more than once how much I admired what great work she was doing.

And what about the poll watcher credentialed by the Republican party whom I had been told to expect? She was, the Obama campaign had discovered, not qualified to challenge voters, and I was ready to pounce on her if she did. Except that she never showed up.

There was, it turned out, little for me to do except chat with the poll workers and accept their invitation to have some of the treats the precinct judges had kindly brought to keep spirits high and stomachs filled throughout the long day. As we popped mini Mint Three Musketeers bars and sipped lots and lots of coffee, I heard plenty of references to the debacle in Florida. I heard excitement about a certain someone's Get Out the Vote effort. (No mentioning of candidates within the polling place, as that would be electioneering.) And I nodded in sincere agreement as one of the precinct judges said, "I don't care what party you're from. Everyone has a right to vote."

The one useful purpose I served was checking names off of a Get Out the Vote list and entering them in a database so that the Obama campaign didn't waste its resources calling people who had already voted. Which perhaps did not require a law degree and a thick handbook of North Carolina election law, but which made me part of an astoundingly well run operation.

When the last of those names had been entered into the database at 4:30, I called one of the organizers and decided that finally -- after over 10 hours at the polls -- I would play the pregnancy card. "This is a model precinct," I informed her. "Is there any reason for me to stick around? Or can I go put my feet up now?"

She told me about the long lines they expected during the last couple of hours of voting, when people got off work, and about the necessity of keeping them from leaving the line without voting. She told me it was more important than ever to have someone there until the bitter end. In other words, she was clear that my work was not done.

So I told the other Obama poll watcher -- who had been there since 12:30 with little more to do than I, except that she had a blackberry and therefore had an easier time entering already-voteds into the database -- to call me if the long lines did indeed materialize. And I ran off to buy milk and juice for my son.

The call never came, but as the time for closing of the polls rolled around, I couldn't resist running back to "my" precinct. I brought The Boy with me so he could get at least a little brush with the historic day.

At 7:35, the place was deserted.

"No long lines?" I asked the other poll watcher.

Turns out, about 100 people had voted in the three hours since I had taken my I'm-pregnant-and-need-to-put-my-feet-up break. No long lines, no Obama workers frenziedly trying to entertain people as they waited, no fights to keep the polls open until every last person in line at 7:30 got to vote.

Still, we got to see the intial machine count for the precinct -- 261 for Obama, 157 for McCain -- and to think about how many of those people were first-time voters or voters whom I had seen enter the polls with a certain amount of well-earned suspicion in their eyes or voters who hadn't shown up on the rolls but whose vote the chief judge secured with phone call after phone call to the County Board of Elections.

It took almost two more days for the North Carolina vote to become official. In the meantime, I heard about Kay Hagen's victory over Elizabeth Dole on the drive back home and learned the next morning that my son will grow up in a state that has just elected its first woman Governor.

And then, yesterday, that email from one of the poll-watching organizers. There had been, he wrote, far fewer problems than they had anticipated. He invoked a North Carolina of his grandparents in a town I haven't heard of.

And I just smiled and savored the victory and thought yet again that those people expecting disenfranchised voters and intimidation and scenes out of a pre-civil-rights South just don't get what Asheville is all about.

ObamAsheville

2008-10-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is in Asheville. This very minute. Right now. Kinda makes me want to squeal a little bit.

This is, somehow, different from, say, the time I was out running after work on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and stopped to find out why there were crowds of people standing on the hill by the Washington Monument. They pointed toward Airforce One, just landed across the street, as President Clinton emerged, waving and smiling just like in all the pictures. It was, I'll admit, pretty thrilling.

And I have that picture of me also in my D.C. days standing awkwardly by Tipper Gore, whom I didn't even like at the time, squeezing in my one Kodak moment before some other gawking onlooker grabbed her for their photo op. I was, frankly, kind of embarrassed about the whole thing, but my friend's sister, who had invited me to the event, insisted.

That doesn't even count all the lesser politicos my friends would point out as we had dinner in Dupont Circle or drinks at a bar on the Hill. It was Washington. Politicians were pretty much expected scenery.

But in Asheville about the only scenery you expect this time of year is a lot of foliage. It's pretty stunning and all. But it's somehow even more stunning when Barack Obama comments on how beautiful it is.

I thought my celebrity-laden days were over when Hubby pulled me away from the golden folks on the West Coast. In Asheville, I've been content with taking the occasional yoga class with Andie McDowell. Which is not, by the way, worth calling my nieces about, the way I used to call them with news of having coffee next to Brad Pitt at the Starbucks on Beverly Boulevard or practicing yoga next to Katie Holmes or spotting Tom Hanks while out shopping at The Grove.

Now, detoxed from those heady days, I get excited when I hear that Barack is staying with Gladys Knight.

"Gladys Knight lives here?!" I ask excitedly. "I didn't know that!"

As if my real estate values have suddenly doubled. As if this isn't little Asheville, but a city of greater flash and prurient interest.

And maybe that's what makes Barack's visit so exciting. You don't expect it here.

I should point out -- she says with outward pride and inward astonishment -- that Barack is in fact the last of the current Dem celebs to visit this year. Michelle gave a rally on Primary day. No fewer than ALL THREE Clintons have made appearances -- Chelsea showed up first, in a modest little talk and appearance at a local church; then, when the race was getting tight, Bill swept into town to speak at Asheville High; and finally, just to show how concerned they were, Hillary made an appearance in one of Asheville's more suburban spots.

So, really, I shouldn't be so surprised or excited or giddy over Obama. But I am.

It began Wednesday, when the Obama campaign announced that he would be staying here to prep for his debate on Tuesday in Nashville.

Nashville, for those who don't know their Appalacian geography, is not very close to Asheville. But it is also not in a big battleground state.

Still, there was no announcement of a speaking engagement, nor, naturally, a location within Asheville. Just that he would be here. Which was exciting. Even though I really didn't see why he wouldn't do just as well prepping at home, which I would think is a little more comfortable, even if the foliage isn't as pretty.

By Thursday, the rumors were flying. A Saturday night fundraising dinner for him was supposed to have a "special, surprise guest." Secret Service had been spotted sweeping the Governor's Western Residence.

And then Thursday night the news broke. Obama would be speaking at a free rally at Asheville High on Sunday. The crowd went wild -- well before Sunday. Fliers appeared, the Sheriff of Buncombe County left me a pre-recorded phone message, and the Obama campaign emailed me to ask for my RSVP, even though they wouldn't guarantee me a spot on the grounds.

By Saturday, I was jumping up and down as friends told of being stopped on the highway by Obama's motorcade -- as if I hadn't been stopped (and annoyed) by motorcades a million times in D.C. Where was my been-there, done-that attitude? Stipped away by hillbilly air, I suppose.

I gave a "way to go" wave to my neighbor as she headed out for the fundraising dinner where, yes, he did appear. I even dreamed I was there.

And on Sunday, after failing to brave the crowds and instead letting my toddler nap in comfort as I watched the rally on the local ABC affiliate (yes, I know, one day he will blame me for not making it possible for him to say he once saw Barack Obama), I gathered around the cell phone of the Asheville High band member who lives across the street to see his picture of Obama and to hear about how OBAMA SHOOK HIS HAND!

I suppose we're entitled to a little bit of enthusiasm, living as we do in a town that doesn't expect much in the way of national attention. I'm sure every one of us knew that Obama tells every crowd to whom he speaks that they live in "God's country" and that he sure plans on returning to visit because it's just so nice here. But every one of us cheered and bounced in our seats when he said it all the same.

As for me, I guess I'm entitled too. Because I may have lived among celebrities when I was in Los Angeles and Washington, but then I had to act like I lived among celebrities. Excitement was strictly frowned upon and, frankly, not worth it most of the time. I mean, Brad Pitt looks pretty much the same whether he's in the pages of People magazine or sitting at the table behind yours sipping a latte.

Now, however, I've been in Asheville for over a year, and all I expect is to enjoy my life without any shiny trinkets of celebrity-spotting to convince anyone else there's something here to enjoy. So when something unexpected does pop up, I have the pleasure of seeing yet again that Asheville has a surprise or two up its sleeve.

Which, I think, is worth getting excited about.

Gas Shortage on the Ground

2008-10-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

The gas shortage in my chosen home of North Carolina made the front page of the New York Times yesterday. Which assures me that even if I hadn't managed to notice it ten days or so in by, you know, living in the middle of it, I would have eventually figured it out by reading about it in the New York Times.

It is, I'll agree, hard to miss long lines of cars clogging the streets, idling away the fumes at the bottom of their tanks in the hopes of making it to the front of the line before the supply runs out. Especially when that long line is snaking its way down the street that intersects our sleepy little residential one.

Aha -- so that's why I suddenly noticed speeding strangers making use of the bypass we offer. Sure, the kids playing ball in the street -- as they are accustomed, our little one-block stretch of road leading exactly nowhere and therefore generally offering no real danger from speeding cars -- might slow them down a bit. A speed bump, if you will (luckily not a literal one). Once I saw what was out there, I understood their detour, even if I still sort of resented it. (I resent it when a stranger parks in front of my house, so you can see how the proprietary feelings I have about the public throughway on which I live might pop up in these circumstances.)

Still, hard as it is to miss a severe gas shortage, I did. For a long time.

Sure, I heard people talking about how hard it is to fill up and worrying about making it to work. But I work at home. Besides, under the best of circumstances, standing at a gas pump is an occasional activity for me. I hardly ever have to drive more than two miles at a time. Plus, oh yeah, I'm pregnant, and pumping gas is a no-no for pregnant women.

In fact, I grew so accustomed to having Hubby pump my gas during my first pregnancy that I became convinced it's something I just don't do even long after I gave birth and got over the notion that it was somehow harmful for The Boy to so much as sit in the car at a gas station.

This somewhat pampered feeling that Hubby is the member of the family who mans -- literally -- the gas pump is, I'll admit, troubling to me. I recall one especially memorable feminist-who-pumps-her-own-gas moment from my high school days. This was when there was actually a real choice between self-service and full-service stations. Near my high school was a little independent self-service with the cheapest prices in the area. And a big sign reading WE PUMP GAS FOR LADIES.

I, of course, took this as a challenge.

Being only sixteen, newly driving, and in my father's car, I might have been a tad cautious backing up to the pump. But nothing, I'm sure, to justify the two men making wild gestures as if I needed their guidance to arrive safely at my male-dominated destination.

I don't remember what I said in response to their assistance, but I do remember the worried/amused expression of my friend in the passenger seat.

I shoved the car into Park and lunged for the pump before one of them could get to it.

"We pump for ladies," the older of the ground crew said to me.

"I can pump my own gas," I muttered. I reached for the gas cap and turned. Or tried to. And tried to. And -- really frustrated now -- tried again.

The manly man tried and failed. Finally, the younger of the two gave it a good tug and managed to release it. As I grabbed the pump from him with a surly internal curse of my father, who, after all, owned the car with the tight gas cap, he grinned at me the grin of the vanquished.

"You see?" he said, his face still, twenty-six years later, hovering in memory. "There are some things ladies just can't do."

So, okay, I can pump my own gas. I feel, at times, obligated to. And still it took me days and days to notice that everyone else was having trouble doing just that because, literally, there was no gas to pump.

My first inkling that something was wrong came on a quick run to the grocery store one afternoon. Usually I know just how to navigate the left-turn-lane-less street that takes me to the highway. But this time I found myself caught in a long, not-moving lane. Did it occur to me that I might inadvertently be in line for gas? Nope. My well-tuned brain figured school was back in session and this was just the result of parents lining up to meet their children at the nearby elementary school.

"My son isn't going to that school," I said huffily by way of punishing whomever I could blame for causing my seven-minute ride to the grocery store to balloon to twenty minutes. I considered calling Hubby to share this decision with him but decided against it. Perhaps a good call, as I'm not so sure he would have let me live my astonishing ignorance down any time soon.

It wasn't until later that afternoon that I finally figured it out. This time I wasn't even in a car. I was walking Audrey (she of the chicken-hunting fame) and had to cross the line of cars waiting at the BP a block from our house. Still, the wheels turned slowly. Until my head finally also turned slowly and I took in the rather stunning sight of cars backed up for a mile or more.

This is, I hasten to remind you, Asheville. We don't get mile-long traffic jams. We just don't.

A flash of understanding. This line of cars looked suspiciously like the one I had endured earlier in the day. Only then, at least a week and a half into the crisis, did I start to pay attention.

So what can I tell you about what it's like on the ground of the gas shortage? Kind of self-satisfied if, like Hubby and I, you can congratulate yourself on choosing to live in the city -- close enough for him to bike to work and me to walk The Boy to school -- forsaking the safety of the suburbs. Not that the suburbs hold the slightest appeal for us or ever have. But, still, we take our self-congratulations where we can get them.

Of course, there's no way not to get caught up in the frenzy to grab gas when you see a station with pumps that aren't covered in tell-tale trash-bags. It's hard to resist when everyone's talking about it -- where there was gas this morning, whether it's still there, how long one should drive around wasting gas looking for gas, how long someone they knew waited in line only to pump six cents' worth into their tank before the supply ran out.

In fact, a few days ago I was driving by a station that -- look! -- had gas! I nearly pulled a U-turn right there, but resolved instead to stop on the way back from my errand. Never mind that I had a full half a tank that under normal circumstances should last me two more weeks. In Asheville these days you just never know when you'll be presented with another opportunity to buy gas without waiting in line.

So, half an hour later (having, in fact, wasted gas driving to a store that was -- wouldn't you know it -- closed) I headed back to the station.

What slowed me down was the discovery that there was in fact a line. Not the more obvious reason to skip it. Namely that I am -- as I may have mentioned -- pregnant and therefore not supposed to pump gas, no matter how lucky I am to find it.

I'd blame my forgetfulness on the Second Pregnancy Syndrome -- whereby you don't pay the least bit of attention to what you eat, what air you breathe, how much you exercise, or all the other things that were so vitally important during your first pregnancy and that does not bode well for the level of attention the second born will garner. (I am, in case you hadn't figured it out, a second born and therefore absolutely determined that this child will get just as much attention and will seem just as much a genius as The Boy. But I'm apparently not off to a good start.)

But, the truth is, neglect of my second pregnancy has nothing to do with it. Because even the least gasoline-addicted of us can't help but get caught up in the fever of a real live local gas shortage.

My Ancestors Come to Asheville

2008-09-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

A year ago, we bought our lovely Asheville home from a couple who lives across the street from us.

At the time, coming from Southern California, as Hubby and I were, and from a law degree, as I was, this fact lay somewhere between discomfiting and horrifying.

To Californians, real estate transactions are brutal affairs, gladiator-like battles in which the putative purchaser balances her desire for a home -- any home she can afford -- against her equally strong wish to prove her superior negotiating skills. Offers are made and countered; inspections are performed and righteous demands for repairs are made; suspicious and often nasty opinions are formed about the party on the other end. Only when closings have closed and pictures have been hung does the animosity begin to drift out the gorgeous original windows as the new homeowner settles into a sense of ownership that owes nothing at all to previous inhabitants, except when they occasionally pop up to haunt her in poorly-installed ceiling fans and Code-violating plumbing.

Living -- as I have for a year now -- in Asheville, however, the fact that the former owners of my home live across the street from me does not seem terribly startling. This couple who lived in our house for six years, meticulously and flawlessly fixed the place up, and entered into a major financial transaction with us, now shares photo albums chronicling the restoration of our ninety-year-old home as we sit on their porch sipping wine. They give us advice on how to winter-proof our windows, tour the house with us to point out oddities that would otherwise have us cursing and freezing as, for example, winter approaches and we are unable to figure out how to get the heat to rise to the second floor, and kindly refrain from tearing up every time they see what our neglect has done to their garden.

The only time I have regretted the proximity and neighborliness of the former owners of our home is when I invite them inside it.

Invariably on these occasions I have dumped a basket of clean laundry on the living room floor with plans of folding it some time hours (or sometimes days) hence. I have failed to pick up the detritus of a small boy's previous evening of play: wooden farm animals strewn across the rug; the dog-hair-ridden pillow we leave on the floor to hide the big hole Audrey dug in our carpet thrown to the side so it can both look ugly and fail to do its job of concealment; Dr. Seuss books distributed over every available surface; and a half-empty sippy cup of curdling milk resting on the back of the couch.

"I'm sorry it's such a mess," I say apologetically. "It really isn't always this bad."

"Don't worry," our neighbor always says with great care. "It took us years to decorate."

Notice she never says, "We were this messy too," or, "Mess? What mess? I'd never know a toddler lives here." And who can blame her?

But today, for the very first time, I wish I had an excuse to invite her in.

It's not that the place is spotless -- far from it. In fact, there's a dresser sans drawers sitting in the middle of our foyer. But it's antique. And its resting place is well earned, as Hubby managed to carry it on his own from the minivan he drove last night from Louisville, Kentucky, to our front door.

(No, I'm not afraid to move a little furniture with my husband. It's just that you're not supposed to do it when you're pregnant. So, you know, I carried table linens instead.)

Rather than bemoan the fact that a dresser is sitting in our foyer, every time I come downstairs or walk from living room to kitchen I stare at it as I pass, marveling at its -- its -- what?

We have other antiques in our home, mixed in with the jumble of Ikea couch, various pieces of artwork chronicling the development of my brother-in-law's career as an artist, and the water-stained coffee table my parents received as a wedding present. Antiques alone don't mean much to me, other than a musty-scented image of someone else's grandmother crocheting doilies and generations of strangers doing things I can't even imagine on the green armchair in our living room.

This dresser, however, is an antique from my family. So is the inlaid set of drawers now temporarily resting next to Hubby's desk (incidentally made by my maternal grandmother right around her 70th birthday). So are the slightly faded, posed portraits of past generations of my paternal ancestors that I spent this morning scattering about the house, and the framed postcard written by my great-great grandmother, newly arrived in the United States, to her family back in Germany. Even the far newer wall hangings that had never particularly wowed me when they adorned the walls at my grandfather's apartment -- I took them because, frankly, we have a lot of blank walls and never bothered to remove all the empty picture hooks left by the former owners -- look lovely and sophisticated and at home on our walls.

This morning, when I came home from dropping The Boy off at school, the jumble of items we acquired while cleaning out my recently deceased grandfather's apartment this weekend was frightening, anxiety-producing. Clutter makes me anxious; clean, neat spaces leave me calm. Unless, of course, the clutter has been there so long I don't notice it. But even then my eye is far too likely to alight on it without warning one day, making me jittery and depressed and certain I'll never live in a house that looks like the ones featured in Vanity Fair articles about beautiful homes that I never read because I find them boring.

Today, however, I moved with a purpose. I separated things into piles, swept from room to room putting them in places -- actual places they belong. I put the framed photograph of my great-great grandmother on top of the inlaid set of drawers, alongside a picture of my grandfather in his Army uniform looking jaunty (if, he used to say with a touch more pride than humor, the oldest Lieutenant the U.S. Army ever saw). I rested the hand-painted picture of my great-grandmother cradling the one-day-to-be-army-lieutenant as an infant on the built-in railing next to the built-in china cabinet (in which we have -- thanks to my ancestors again -- real china).

And as I wandered through my home -- past the bureau in the foyer and the box-upon-box of vacation slides Hubby rescued from the trash pile and the table linens monogrammed with my great-grandmother's initials -- I felt more at home, among these things from my grandfather's home, than I ever have.

These items that meant so little to me resting in their familiar spots in my grandfather's apartment have taken on a new life. They are here for my son and his soon-to-be-sibling, certainly. But they are also here for me, a reminder of where I have come from, and a welcome piece of myself that I never quite cared about before.

And so, last night, as we cruised down I-40 in our rented Nissan Quest with the Elmo DVD playing in the back seat, I brought my ancestors to Asheville. Home with me.

If you'd like to read more about my trip to Louisville with an active toddler, and what it taught me about being flexible in life, go to YogaMamaMe's story "Travels with Toddler."

Asheville Anniversary

2008-08-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

So a friend emailed me the other day asking me for a link to my blog that she hadn't read in some time. Having not read it myself in probably longer, I headed over here and discovered that, to my shame, the last time I wrote about my new life in Asheville was, um, Memorial Day. To put this in perspective, we are now on the cusp of Labor Day. Nothing like a good, long summer vacation.

I have, I hasten to plug -- um, mention -- been writing plenty of a slightly different sort at YogaMamaMe. I didn't mean to abandon A Hill-ish Life. I just figured if ever I had a good story that couldn't be tied to motherhood and aging and yoga and my wavering sense of self I'd traipse back over here to tell it.

It seems, however, that if you try hard enough, just about anything in life can be tied to motherhood and aging and yoga and my wavering sense of self. Especially if you have a toddler, have just turned 42, and are struggling to keep up with your yoga practice when you have limited time, your favorite new yoga teacher is about to leave town, and your energy level hovers -- for obvious reasons -- around that of a 42-year-old pregnant woman. In other words, I suddenly and unintentionally was no longer writing pieces for A Hill-ish Life.

But a story did come up a couple of weeks ago, one that exemplified yet again the lovely mingling of small town and home of urban transplants, hills living and tourist center, place that's still new to me and, yes, home, that Asheville has come to mean. Best yet, the story takes place on my and Hubby's wedding anniversary. Which itself took place just a couple of weeks before the anniversary of our first year in Asheville. Which, come to think of it, is right about, oh, today.

So now, it seems, it is time to give some attention to A Hill-ish Life, if only as practice for remembering to give The Boy an occasional pat on the head after his sibling arrives in March. (It is very difficult for me to even joke about this, so please know that I am joking.)

Being the type of person who gets grumpy when you ask me to plan something special for myself but who secretly expects the person doing the asking to make the day special despite my protests that it doesn't matter, I didn't really get on the ball in terms of planning a special wedding anniversary. We had just ended a long run of visitors, with my dearest friend flying back to L.A. two days before our anniversary. I had work to do, a toddler to run after, and did I mention the pregnant thing? We weren't public yet, which meant I had to pretend not to be tired and sick and not unlike Tony Soprano wandering through one of his dreams that none of the viewers ever really understood -- kind of disconnected and confused and only pretending to get what was going on.

But, busy as we both were, Hubby rightly insisted we mark the occasion with a nice lunch. And I found myself waiting for him in the sunshine on the steps leading to the street near the restaurant in a cute red silk top and high heels. Neither high heels nor silk is a favorite of mothers of toddlers: High heels for obvious reasons -- you try kneeling down to pick up a 25-pound sack of child in three-inch strappy sandals. Silk because it can not be worn anywhere in the vicinity of a 20-month-old when food, dirt, or grape juice are to be found nearby. Which, where a toddler is concerned, is always. So you know I had finally managed to mark this as a special occasion. I had also cleverly hiked up a too-long black skirt into a sexy little number that worked as long as you didn't get close enough to spot the spider veins that have been stealthily creeping across my legs since I last wore shorts in 2005 -- and no one was going to get that close besides my husband, who probably knows about them already and has so far managed to avoid mentioning them to me and probably could be counted on to ignore them on our wedding anniversary.

We were meeting at a lovely restaurant we had discovered a couple weeks before, during my mother-in-law's visit (second in the string of three out-of-town groups who ranged through our home in July and August). Cucina 24 is everything the hills of Western Carolina are not to those who have never been here. They cook Italian, not possum. They have a professional pizza oven, not a wood-burning stove, which would be far easier to find in this town. Everything we have ever eaten there has been impeccable, so much so that I am not joking when I say I am looking forward to bringing my parents there on their next trip to Asheville. I am not joking about this because my mother does not joke about the places she is expected to sleep and eat when on vacation. Generally, this list should not include anyplace in Asheville, but as she has been forced here by my relocation of her grandson, she has discovered both a hotel and a restaurant or two up to her standards, and I felt certain she would welcome Cucina 24 into the fold as well.

Hubby hurried down the steps to meet me carrying a bundle of roses -- four red ones for each year of our marriage, and one white one for The Boy. It was an utterly unironic romantic gesture, the kind men get to make on wedding anniversaries without fear of appearing sentimental and like they are expected to mark other occasions -- like our first cup of coffee together or the first time my basset hound Roxanne presented her belly to him for rubbing -- with equally romantic gestures.

We settled down for a lovely extended meal. We shared a salad. We ordered entrees. We chatted with the waiter. We forgot that Thursdays are pretty much always hellish for him at work and I hadn't made any money in weeks.

As we nibbled at our gelato, my rings sparkling wittily under the recessed lights, feeling every bit the couple on their four-year-wedding-anniversary date, the waiter brought us the check.

"You'll see," he said somewhat apologetically, "that only the dessert is on there. Table Restaurant is picking up the rest."

It was one of those moments when -- again, I'm going back to a Tony Soprano dream even though that show is way past its cultural currency, but I can't think of any better analogy -- you know the person speaking is indeed speaking English, but you can't for the life of you understand what he's saying.

"What?" Hubby said, a reasonable and impressive response.

"Table is picking it up," the waiter explained again. "That's all I know." He reminded us that he was new at the job, as we'd discussed during the course of our leisurely and -- did I mention? -- not inexpensive lunch.

Table is another restaurant in town that proves yet again how Asheville really isn't located anywhere near Appalachia but rather on a tesseract that sweeps you to a hidden spot in Oregon where everyone has North Carolina plates and pays North Carolina taxes and doesn't vote for John Edwards but doesn't really live in North Carolina. We're not quite in California, but we are most definitely located on the west coast, no matter what any map or airplane pilot might tell you.

The waiter retreated and Hubby and I began spinning our conspiracy theories.

"Do you think someone mistook us for someone else?" I asked uneasily.

Hubby shook his head. He is a man and does not like other people to pay for his meals. Something about the mysterious connection between a wallet, a stomach, and a penis that I've never been able to figure out. Not that I've really tried. If someone else wants to pay for my meal badly enough to fight me about it, the pacifist in me graciously gives way every time.

Then I had a thought. "I saw a guy sitting alone at the counter," I said, my mind tripping spy-like around the clues. "The manager was pouring him glasses of wine out of a bottle and seemed to know him. You think it was the owner of Table?"

"Even if that was the owner of Table, why would he buy us lunch?" Hubby asked. He squirmed the squirm of a man who has had someone else beat him to the check -- only he didn't even know who this someone was or that there had been a race.

We stared at each other. We had switched genres mid-story, a romance novel suddenly taking a turn into a mystery thriller.

"I hope he didn't hear me say this place is as good as Table," Hubby finally ventured, squirming even more. I had to agree that it's one thing to have a stranger buy you lunch and quite another thing for him to do it because you have just maligned his livelihood.

"He couldn't have," I said, sounding about as sure as I felt.

"Do you think it's the faculty adviser thing?" Hubby asked uncertainly. He had just begun a new part-time job as the faculty adviser to the student newspaper at a small college just outside of town. The owners of Table, he had informed me over lunch, were graduates of that school.

"Maybe," I said dubiously. "But it seems strange for them to buy you lunch just because you're advising the newspaper."

Hubby agreed. But what other reason could there be?

"Do you think it was the wine?" I finally asked. I barely remembered the wine, since it had been spilled on me -- more appropriately, all over me -- over two months before, when my sister and her boyfriend were in town. We'd taken them to dinner at Table -- then, in our pre-Cucina 24 days, our favorite restaurant in Asheville (and it's still our second, in case the owner is reading this). Unbeknownst to me, the people at the next table ordered red wine from a waiter who was wearing tight new shoes or had had one too many the night before or otherwise was having one of those nights when you should not be balancing trays containing glasses of red wine. It tumbled and got me. Pretty well.

Apologies were sincere and many, the wine didn't seem about to do anything permanent to my outfit, and I frankly didn't think it was a huge deal. Apologies accepted, we headed into dessert.

But Asheville isn't a hillbilly town, and Table is the sort of restaurant that could easily make it in L.A. or San Francisco (maybe not Manhattan because it is, after all, Asheville, and a little laid back for Manhattanites). So when the check arrived I expressed some surprise that they hadn't, say, comped us a dessert, just as a formal apology for the wine.

Can I explain here that I am not cheap and I am not a freeloader -- my expectations of free desserts and receipt of free lunches notwithstanding? It wasn't the six dollars for a dessert, just the expectation that in a nice restaurant that's what you do to apologize for spilling wine on a customer.

While I intended my comment as nothing more than an end-of-meal conversation piece, Hubby took it a bit more seriously. Maybe it's that he had taken out his wallet and therefore involved his penis in the conversation. On our way out, he noted to the manager -- not angrily or rudely, but forcefully -- that in the future if they spilled wine on a customer they might consider comping the dessert.

The manager was most gracious and promised to do just that the next time we were in.

Only he wasn't there the next few times we were. And he wasn't the manager, apparently. He was the owner. Who happened to be having lunch at Cucina 24 on our wedding anniversary. And who happened to recognize us -- well, probably not me because I'm not 6'5" like Hubby -- and ended up comping us everything but dessert.

Figuring out the mystery brought on an odd mixture of responses. I mostly felt pleased with myself for figuring it out, which just shows how self-centered I can be sometimes. But I also was genuinely touched by the gesture, and impressed by his ability to recall us, recall the two-month-old minor incident, and respond so graciously.

Hubby was touched too, but, much more, sort of embarrassed. Like I said, it's hard for men to let someone else buy them a meal, especially when that person doesn't even know them, wasn't eating with them, and certainly wasn't party to the anniversary being celebrated.

But the anniversary was, in a way, the whole point. Not just the wedding anniversary part, but its proximity to the anniversary of our first year in Asheville.

After all, here we were, celebrating our life together as that life settled into the rhythms of a new home, where the food is as good as anything we could have found in L.A. but the people are, at times like this, in the best way of a small town, often better.

Memorial Day Hillbilly Style

2008-05-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

In my experience, geography plays a large part in what Memorial Day means (beyond the honor-the-troops part that the newspapers remind us of annually, making me feel chastened for about the amount of time it takes me to finish reading the paper before heading off to one party or another).

Growing up in Los Angeles, it was the last day you could count on having an outdoor barbecue before July, since June is the only month in Southern California that can reliably be counted on to bring cold and rain. In the cities of New England and New York, Memorial Day represented a whispering hope of summer rarely fulfilled, when we found ourselves standing around at some optimistic outdoor venue shivering and hoping we wouldn't have to retrieve the umbrella from the car. Memorial Day was generally pretty warm in the DC environs, but also the bearer of summer thunderstorms and the feel of living in a dishwasher on the dry cycle that comes with endless days of 90 percent humidity. And the Memorial Day parties I recall from my days in St. Louis evoke memories of the scent of Off and citronella candles and of warm-ish cans of Budweiser sucked down in a desperate effort to stay ahead of the heat and bugs.

So how do we do the onset of summer in the WNC Hills?

Here in Asheville, The Boy and I celebrated by going to the pool at the JCC.

This is not, I suspect, what one might expect to hear when being told of a traditional Hillbilly Memorial Day. Jews and corncob pipes don't generally mix in the collective imagination. Nor does a place to swim that does not involve inner tubes, cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and cut-off shorts.

We did, I hasten to point out, spend Saturday at the White Squirrel Festival in Brevard, forty minutes south of town. Turns out the festival wasn't about eating white squirrels, but we saw plenty of amateur replicas, lots of Boy Scouts and Chamber of Commerce types, and some really good live music. (In addition to retaining more of the hill culture than Asheville, Brevard is home to a highly regarded music school.) What we did not find, to Hubby's great disappointment, was a beer tent. But The Boy enjoyed the roasted corn on the cob that was available so much that Hubby forgave the Festival this major shortcoming.

Asheville, however, despite my best efforts to color it otherwise, is not exclusively hillbilly territory. Hence, the JCC pool is a gathering place, not only of Jews, but of other young, upscale transplants from California, New Jersey, and the Midwest. They grill brautwurst and drink microbrew IPA's. Their children rest between bouts in the pool with library books and colored pencils. True, the lifeguard to whom I spoke about possible swimming lessons for The Boy sported a shiny gold nipple ring and a thick hills accent, but Hubby assures me The Boy will speak like us, not like the other adults in his life, so I feel it will be safe for him to learn to swim from this man.

I was thrilled to discover this lovely summer ritual just a half mile from our home -- close enough to load up the stroller with snacks and baby sunblock and towels and hoof it over -- where neighbors greeted me warmly and mothers of The Boy's preschool friends chatted with me around the baby pool.

The Boy, however, was less enamored than I of the social possibilities offered by our JCC membership.

While he adored swimming in my parents' pool last summer, he was determined not to join the splashing, yelling mass of kids in this overwhelming, noisy, hot place. Clutching Buddy, his blankie, he allowed me to take him over to the baby pool to see his friend from school. He even consented to putting Buddy out of harm's way and to sit in my lap while I dangled my feet in the cool of the pool (as Horton the elephant would say).

He showed enough interest in a bucket of toys at water's edge to eventually wander from my lap, and to gaze with round, serious eyes upon the efforts of a teenage girl who volunteers at his school to engage him and his friend in play. His friend was happy to have water squeezed on his head and to race toy cars. But the Boy made it quite clear, for his part, that his head was a water-free zone, although he did shyly demonstrate his knowledge of how toy cars work with the ones he clutched in his round little hands.

What The Boy would not do, under any circumstances, was get in the water. I asked him several times as he sat at the edge of the baby pool but he declined. I decided he could go in the big pool in my arms and thereby get over his fear. While he had no choice in the first half of this proposition, I was dead wrong about the second. As I made my way down the steps, he wrapped his legs around me extra-tightly so as to have leverage to pull them well out of the range of the water. When I dipped one of his feet into the water he whined his disapproval. When playing children inadvertently splashed him, he cried. And I gave up.

We spent the remainder of our short time at the JCC pool sitting on a towel eating grapes and playing with the stacking magnetic bugs he received as a gift when he was ten months old and has recently rediscovered. I managed a few words with other adults, but they were brief and not promising of longterm friendship, anchored as I was to a hot little boy who wanted nothing more than to go home.

We arrived home to a peaceful front yard shaded by maple trees and decorated by lounging hound dogs. I had to concede that a glass of cool water and the breeze playing softly through the trees was just as nice as friendly neighbors and the smell of chlorine, and a lot more sane.

Besides, according to The Boy, blowing bubbles on the steps of his own front porch is the ideal way to welcome summer to Asheville.

Asheville Al Fresco

2008-05-22T08:17:00.001-07:00

Summer is on its way to Asheville.

It's taking its time, mind you. As soon as I get excited by a warm, sunny day a big, dark storm cloud dumps buckets of cold water on my happiness. Or an arctic wind blows a chilly blanket over a tauntingly sun-speckled afternoon. I've despaired of ever putting the space heater next to my desk into deep storage and truly believe the teacher at The Boy's school who sent his stand-by long-sleeved shirt home for the season is crazy.

But we have had the pleasure of more than one warmth-kissed evening. There is a certain besotted-ness never to be recaptured in sitting on your own front porch, waving at the neighbors and watching your child tumble through the fauna of the front yard. Or in eating dinner downtown in a restaurant open to the street, where we take turns walking down the sidewalk with The Boy as he gazes upon the lights in the trees and chases after dogs out with their owners. If ever he had a chance of adjusting his sleep schedule to daylight savings time, we have destroyed it with our own woozy happiness at spending evenings outdoors with our child.

Last Saturday, the start of summery evenings brought us an even greater opportunity than giving our child a lifetime of sleeping disorders (at least according to the articles I occasionally come across in the New York Times with the latest studies about how we're doing everything wrong when it comes to sleep training). Hubby was invited to a block party by someone at work. A real, live, outdoor social event.

We were excited but cautious. Would we fit in? Would be meet new friends? Or would we stand on (rather than in) a corner, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot like a thirteen-year-old at a dance when "Stairway to Heaven" is playing -- not entirely sure we want to be dancing but disappointed that no one has asked us to?

I was leaning toward the less hopeful side of things when Saturday came. Work took precedence over yoga practice since I had spent most of the week watching a too-sick-for-school boy. This meant that I was already five or ten pounds heavier than I wanted to be for meeting all those . . . who? Who was I meeting who really cared how I looked?

"Not the point," I muttered to myself as I struggled to find an outfit with just the right sense of carefree summer-ness but enough warmth to guarantee I wouldn't end up feeling cold and stupid and willing to wear just about anything with long sleeves someone offered me, no matter how bad it made me look. Crisis number two: the weather was not exactly summer-like, though it teased the edges of warm enough to hang out outdoors in something less than North Face fleece-lined windbreakers.

One thing we did have going for us. The Boy had taken an astounding three and a half hour nap. Which meant that we were going to be up entertaining him well past our bedtime anyhow. Might as well do it outside the boring confines of home.

We made our way to a little street no more than a mile from our home and parked the car. As we walked down the block toward the festivities a warm breath of sunbaked air wrapped around me. I don't know how it's possible, but I swear it was a good ten degrees warmer on that street than it was in our own shaded front yard.

Looking back, I believe I turned a corner when I removed my cardigan with only a moment's hesitation about the chocolate brown bra straps peeking out from under my spaghetti-strap top. An hour before, the very thought of looking so sloppy would have sent me diving back into my closet. But get me away from mirrors, show me how absolutely ordinary all the other folks at the party are, introduce me to the new phenomenon of going to social events with my child instead of my martini-swilling best girlfriend, and I melt into that realm where you look great precisely because you don't care how you look.

For a time, we meandered, taking stock, petting dogs to make it look like we weren't shyly standing around not knowing anyone, and spending more time than necessary rearranging the food table to accommodate the rice salad Hubby made. If we had been at an indoor party we would have been forced to make our way uncomfortably from room to room until we ran out of options for trying to appear as if we were actually going somewhere with a purpose. But the outdoors lessened the pressure. We were a mere step away from strolling amongst a bunch of strangers downtown, only here there was a tantalizing possibility of extended conversation.

Hubby took over the first follow-The-Boy shift, and I did what anyone who doesn't really know the other people at a party does. I ate.

We all three ended up by the bands -- a rotation of neighbors with surprising talent, none so much as the nine-year-old girl who belted out a tune sounding almost like Michelle Shocked, only too young to have ever engaged in a good protest march. I ended up talking to a really interesting woman, a college friend of the host. We chatted about motherhood and career and college days. Of course, she lives in Atlanta.

But at least I can rest assured I still know how to strike up a friendship and may even one day do it with someone who lives close enough to, say, go with to the Sex and the City movie premiere. (For the record, I am planning on going by myself while The Boy is at school. I am not the least bit shamed by the article I just read about how everyone is going to see it in groups. I did, after all, once sit through a midnight showing of Beaches all alone.)

After a while I found myself in charge of The Boy, and then the party really took off. We explored the hill behind where Daddy stood watching the bands and engaging in the we're-all-friends-here-even-though-I-
don't-know-you talk. We went racing down the hill after the sticky whiffle ball The Boy found half buried in the ivy behind the swing set. And, best of all, we danced.

There is no one, I feel certain, who can manage not to smile at a sixteen-month-old dancing to "Psycho Killer." At least not when you're at a block party in a neighborhood and a town where people have kids. After all, the band playing the song just as surely listened to it in college as I did. A long, long time ago.

So these parents could be in a band playing music that made them feel like you don't shed some of your hipness when you become a parent as surely as you shed beer-weight and bad haircuts when you leave college. And I could pretend that having a toddler makes me as young as a woman you would expect to have a toddler. I don't know how old that is, but I suspect it's a good deal younger than forty-one.

Thankfully, not many people think you're forty-one when you're crouching, in true yoga-lubricated-knees fashion, next to your toddler in a spaghetti-strapped Gap top and Keds that I once spotted on Rory in an episode of Gilmore Girls.

Even more thankfully, you don't much care if they do when you're busy grinning as your child claps his hands and gives out a "Yaaaaaay!" with the rest of the music-loving crowd.

Mother's Day in the Neighborhood

2008-05-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

One of the things we excitedly told people about the house we bought on our three-day househunting trip to Asheville last summer was how many children lived on the block. "The Boy will have kids to play with!" we enthused, no doubt steeped in sun-flecked memories of our own childhoods running wild on the streets in the days when parents didn't worry about things like pedophiles and bike helmets.

There are more than a few moments when, however, my enthusiasm for living on a street with lots of kids freaks me out.

Who is this woman who sees it as a plus that small children can be heard calling to each other in the early evening hours of a spring night? Can it be me ooh-ing over a little girl's tutu and aah-ing over a little boy's Speed Racer promo car from "Mickey Donald's"? And do I really want to be here in ten or twelve years when they become teenagers driving cars?

Oh yeah. One of those teenagers will be mine. Which quite changes everything. And, yes, makes me like living on this block and talking to four-year-olds about the cookies they ate in school today.

I began to truly appreciate the world of which I am now a part on Mother's Day.

Normally, I'd think Mother's Day was all about me since I am, you know, the mother. But that morning I didn't much feel like being the center of attention. Call it the crappy weather. Call it the reminder that I will be getting up at 6:30 on Sunday mornings for a long, long time to come. Or, if you will, attempt to psychoanalyze what my problem is with being the one getting the special treatment for a day. The thing is, I just wasn't feeling too excited about going out for a big celebration in Asheville. It was cold and rainy and I have been dreaming of the beach lately, either because the weather is turning warm or because it is disappointing me in a deep, personal way by repeatedly turning cold again.

The Boy wasn't being much of a Mother's Day gift either. Cute as ever, of course, but with a runny nose that occasionally slid into bouts of inconsolable crying over some shortcoming of mine like giving him the wrong spoon after plopping some yogurt in his bowl at breakfast. Then again, maybe I was the one not being much of a Mother's Day gift. At any rate, he was ready for an early nap and I was ready to watch a movie with Hubby, who wisely drew the blinds just in case the sun came out and I lost the ability to watch a movie in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

I was, to be honest, more than a little distracted when, sure enough, half an hour into the movie I noticed a sliver of bright light at the bottom of one of the blinds. I tried to ignore it, but my toes started to twitch in tribute to my own mother who, could she see me, would surely give me a "What are you doing inside on a beautiful day?" for old times sake. I was almost glad when, far earlier than we'd expected, we heard The Boy's cries of indignation at awakening to find himself -- offense of offenses -- in his crib.

It was still well within the range of respectable lunch times, the sun was shining, and I somehow managed to come up with a restaurant I wanted to go to for lunch. So off we headed.

We walked in the door to find one of The Boy's friends from school having lunch with his parents. In fact, I had had a nice chat with his mother a couple days earlier, when I craftily volunteered to devote my "Mitzvah Hours" to sitting with a bunch of napping toddlers while their teachers headed off for a Teacher Appreciation lunch. "Mitzvah Hours" is a euphemism for mandatory volunteer work at The Boy's school. "Is it a mitzvah if someone makes you do it?" Hubby asked me. I waved away the question as one that would only make me resent the obligation more.

But, as it turned out, the whole volunteer thing was great. We volunteer moms sat and chatted for an hour an a half, and I came away feeling like maybe, ahead in the distance, I might be headed toward the faint sounds of a social life.

Here, on Mother's Day, at the Sunnyside Cafe, was my proof that I was. Cool family, cool restaurant. Made me feel kind of cool myself, despite my joy at living on a block full of little kids and their detritus. At this point, Asheville, for all the pros and cons of a small town, was feeling like a good place to celebrate Mother's Day.

But great as it was to watch The Boy and his school friend kick their legs with the joy of recognizing each other, the moment when it hit me that not only am I a mother, but I have a SON came later, at home.

The sun had firmly established itself by then, so we headed out to the front yard to blow the bubbles that so fascinate The Boy. "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" he yells when he spots them spinning along the length of the front porch. He even blew one of his own that day, the pleasure of which I decided far outweighed the danger from all the soap he swallowed the many, many times he put the wand in his mouth instead of blowing on it.

Then our neighbors came out to work on their yard, and their four-year-old boy, Matthew, headed over to our fence.

Matthew had shown remarkable interest in The Boy once before, when we and his parents bumped into each other at the park around the corner. At the time, I had chocked up a four-year-old's tolerance for a sixteen-month-old to boredom and the possibilities offered by a sandbox. After all, a four-year-old can't possibly fathom why it is that a sixteen-month-old has so little to say, nor why he is still kind of wobbly on his feet. Although I doubt he minds when his young friend eats sand.

But, as a four-year-old will do, Matthew saw nothing the least bit unusual about being friends with his little neighbor. The world at that age has the wonderful in-the-moment quality that renders such things as playing with a sixteen-month-old much less of a big deal than the fact that you can steer the Speed Racer car.

When Matthew was distracted from demonstrating this feature, as four-year-olds frequently are, The Boy picked up the yellow Speed Racer car from the sidewalk and examined it intently. Hmm. Big boys play with these. Must be good stuff.

Matthew returned looking for his car. "The Boy has it," I informed him. I turned to my son. "Can you give Matthew his car back?" I asked without much hope for success.

But he did. My boy walked to Matthew, hand outstretched, and handed him his Speed Racer car, and suddenly Mother's Day meant something new. No longer was being a mother just about thrilling with every newly discovered word and eating breakfast in my pj's because my son insists on eating his sloppily in my lap. It wasn't solely about my relationship with my little boy. It was about my little boy being just that -- a boy walking after his friend as they explored the yard next door.

"Sit on your bottom!" I called as Matthew and The Boy approached some steps. Matthew looked up at me like someone who knows to listen to a mother, and, after a moment The Boy did as I suggested. But for a few seconds before he did, he was poised at the top of the stairs with Matthew holding his hand as if to help him down.

And in that perfect tableau I saw that one of the joys of being a mother is watching your child learn to navigate the world, not with you, but with a friend.

Voting Early (But Not Often)

2008-05-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

Who knew when I moved to North Carolina that I'd be so important to the rest of the nation? Every time you look at a newspaper these days, it's all about the North Carolina Democratic Primary on Tuesday.

Me, I've already voted.

North Carolina has something called "early voting." I'd never heard of such a thing, although everyone here seems to think it's so normal as to be unworthy of comment or explanation. I guess if you can get enough people to work the polls for a good three weeks before the primary, you too can have early voting.

Still, I was suspicious. Who's to say the box with your ballot won't get lost between the day you vote and election day?

My suspicion is not entirely unfounded. (Just like my suspicion that if I don't ask for a receipt at the gas pump my credit card number will somehow remain in the machine to be spit out at the next customer; this fear was justified when I had ATM card information stolen from a gas pump a few years ago, almost making the hassle worth it.) I'm still smarting from my first presidential election in 1984. I was a freshman in college and duly requested my absentee ballot. Some fiasco on which I am now a little bit fuzzy occurred that launched me into a fiery letter addressed to my Senators about being disenfranchised on this, my first chance to vote the way a left-leaning eighteen-year-old easily influenced by the politics of a notoriously left-leaning college campus would vote. Alan Cranston's office responded; the newly elected Republican Pete Wilson's office did not. I still didn't get to vote.

I was also feeling jealous of my vote in the primary election this year because it actually matters. I spent much of my voting life in places like California and Massachusetts, where the Dems really didn't need my vote. And primary elections? Even living in states with elections far earlier than ridiculously late North Carolina, I frequently found myself voting for the guy who had already dropped out of the race: in 1992 in New York, I voted for Bob Kerrey after he had ceded the race to Bill Clinton, and in 2004 in pre-move-up-our-primary-date-because-we-have-so-many-delegates California, I voted for Edwards even though John Kerry already had the nomination. Not alone among the disenfranchised, I was pleased to find that I, Hubby (Kucinich), and my best friend (Dean) had all managed to vote for different candidates without a one of us voting for Kerry.

Then there was the actual Presidential election of 1980, when my father drove to the polls in Los Angeles after work to vote for Carter while listening to his concession speech on the radio.
The fact that I remember this somewhat humiliating event shows just what a mark it left on me.

And so my fear of early voting, of the chance that this, my second vote that could count, might not. (The first time I felt like my vote counted, I help elect the dead guy to one of Missouri's U.S. Senate seats; the defeated John Ashcroft went on to be a calamitous Attorney General, a tenure for which my family still blames me.) Still, all three Clintons and Michelle Obama have already made their pitches here. People are holding out hope for Barack, but the message is clear. We're almost expected to do the early voting thing.

Then, on Thursday evening, Hubby came home grinning about how much fun he had had early voting that day. He dropped a post-it with the names of candidates running for state seats in front of me and said, "I did a little research. In case you want to know who else to vote for."

"Because I should let me husband tell me whom to vote for," I said, pretending to be offended but really both surprised there were other opposed offices and relieved that I wouldn't have to figure out for myself which candidate I supported.

"You don't have to vote for the same people," Hubby pointed out. But I already knew I was going to. And I knew I was going to do it the following day, Friday.

The next afternoon, I headed for the local public library, one of several early voting polling places.

My understanding is that one of the justifications for offering early voting is to avoid the long lines on election day that somehow seem to end up only at polling places in heavily Democratic precincts. But here I was in a strictly partisan primary and I couldn't find a spot in the parking lot.

Weaving my way around an aggressive senior citizen cruising for the next available spot, I parked illegally at the side of the building. We were all compatriots, I figured, responsible citizens being sure to vote early.

As I crossed the parking lot, I spotted a table set up just beyond the no-solicitation zone with a sign reading OBAMA TICKETS HERE. Hmm, I thought, never having voted in North Carolina before. Maybe here they offer you a whole ticket to go along with the presidential candidate of your choice.

I walked over to the table, thinking maybe I could toss aside my husband's voting directive in favor of directions from complete strangers. Then I noticed the name "Michelle" written in the top corner of the sign. Michelle Obama, I recalled, was speaking that afternoon at the UNC Asheville campus. It was this sort of ticket being distributed, not some additional quirk of the North Carolina voting system. Since I already had plans to do something non-historic that evening, I kept going.

Inside, the polling place looked pretty much like most places I've voted, except maybe the garage where we regularly did our local voting in Long Beach. There was no place to tie up the dogs, had I brought them, here. But there was the same phalanx of tables: one where they would check you off on the rolls, a separate one where you got your ballot, and the rickety tables where you were instructed to mark your ballot only with the pen provided (in my case, a plain old Bic ballpoint with a big feather attached to the end that made me feel a vague connection to the Founding Fathers).

The one big difference from my past voting experiences was that the two women checking in voters were using laptops instead of big books of names that no one ever seems to be able to negotiate. I stepped up to the elder of the two, a woman of about 70, perched behind her shiny silver Dell. She blew away all the senior citizens who volunteered in the polls in West Hollywood and couldn't quite seem to be able to handle those new-fangled books that listed the voters alphabetically.

She asked my name, and I went through the contortions I condemned myself to when I chose to add Hubby's surname to my own without bothering to put a hyphen between them.

"It's two words," I said. "Cole, C-O-L-E . . ."

Her fingers were so fast there was no need for me to continue. I wasn't there.

"It's probably under Essig," I said wearily. You'd think I'd be over the frustration of strangers relegating half of my last name to the role of forgotten and useless middle name by now, as well as to that moment of wondering just who "Melissa Essig" is.

But this septugenarian computer whiz saved me. "Do you want to try your birthday?" she asked.

And there it was, my truncated name. But here's what I loved most about my voting experience. She FIXED it. This diminutive, white-haired, sweet old lady sent her fingers flying over the keys of a fancy new laptop and moments later handed me a sheet of paper with my full, proper name on it. So next time I vote early there will be no confusion.

And so I cast my vote with the feather-adorned pen and fed my ballot into the machine that counts how many ballots go in. (Will it add its count to all the other boxes so we know not only if a ballot is lost from a particular box but will be alerted when the entire box is locked in a room in the library basement, mistaken for old books?) I happily put my "I Voted" sticker on, even though it felt funny to be wearing it four days before the primary election.

And I watched Obama on Meet the Press this morning just to make sure the vote I've already cast was the one I felt was right. I wonder if anyone has told him about early voting.

A Two Market Town

2008-04-25T06:36:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday we went to, not one, but two tailgate farmers markets. It must be spring in Asheville.

I still recall the days when I was living in Manhattan and the farmer's market meant a Sunday stroll through Union Square to purchase an oversized sticky bun. To me, the market was just like one of the ubiquitous fairs that fill the streets of Manhattan on weekends, except instead of curly fries and the ASPCA van hawking dogs and kittens for adoption it offered only vegetable and flower stands. Pretty, but I hadn't yet acquired an organic-local-small farmer consciousness, so I wasn't there to shop. It was, in my defense, the early '90's, and I didn't have Michael Pollan to point out the error of my ways. Or Hubby, who I'll admit is the one who reads the Michael Pollan books in our house and then passes the pertinent bits on to me.

We did have farmers markets when we lived in West Hollywood and Long Beach as well. But they weren't nearly the community affairs they feel like here. Stands pushed side-by-side in parking lots, they often required a lot of elbowing and skillful maneuvering around the kettle corn vendor, who seemed to attract the biggest crowds. Organic produce was surprisingly difficult to come by, and really no cheaper than what was available at Wild Oats. Or maybe I just told myself that.

Here in Asheville, however, we take our farmers markets seriously. You know the vendors grew the produce themselves, offering the opportunity either for a friendly chat or a dicey eyes-averted duck-and-bob as you head for more promising vegetal wares. The musician strumming a guitar and singing folk songs is far from polished and frequently just a little bit off key. Dogs are allowed to wander through with their owners, making me misty eyed for my baby Roxanne, who regularly saw her efforts to investigate the West Hollywood farmers market thwarted. (Our current dogs are not among those wandering the Asheville farmers market because Audrey doesn't know how to be polite to other dogs, which sometimes makes me miss Roxanne even more.)

We were particularly excited for last Saturday's market-going. Although the tailgate near us -- on the UNC Asheville campus -- professes to be year-round, it dwindled considerably by November. We returned once in December to buy a pristine Christmas tree, but there wasn't much edible to purchase, unless you count decorative gourds.

By then we were on a waiting list for a CSA -- Community Supported Agriculture. A new concept to me, CSA's are more or less like a co-op; you pay a flat fee up front and, come spring, the growers divvy up a portion of their produce among the CSA members. Every week you pick up your box of goodies and start cooking. The one to which we applied included an option to receive fresh flowers weekly (we signed up) and to lower the cost by volunteering hours working on the farm (we used The Boy as an excuse to decline).

Notice that we had to apply for the CSA. It even took some work just to find one who'd let us do that. Apparently, if you plan to own a small farm, you'd best do it in Western Carolina. Because we Ashevilleans are lining up for your offerings. So many of us, in fact, that a month ago I received the sad news that our one CSA hope was, yep, full.

I can't say I was too upset about that on Saturday morning. While we pretended we would have continued the Saturday ritual of strolling to the farmers market even as a CSA member, I tend to doubt the pull would have been nearly as strong if we already had a refrigerator full of produce at home. Plus, it's likely to be a much longer stroll this spring, with The Boy, at 25 pounds, able to walk himself and therefore rather disdainful of his stroller. Even if we could get him in it, I can vouch for the fact that there's little relaxed or fun about pushing 40 plus pounds of baby and stroller up the Asheville hills. Or so I'm reminded every afternoon when The Boy and I return from school.

At any rate, it was threatening rain on this particular Saturday, so the car was an easy choice. Even though there is something just plain wrong about driving your SUV (a crossover! and a Honda!) to the tailgate market so you can righteously purchase locally grown produce.

Turns out even doing that much was a bit of a struggle. The thing about those small local farms -- they tend to grow for the season. And, sun outside my window notwithstanding, the April season yields little in the way of edible produce. Plenty of lovely flowers were available for transplanting, but the gardener in our family didn't seem interested, and I'm not in a position to make backyard suggestions, seeing as I do zero work out there.

We left with a bag of watercress and some sausage from the local animal farm because they didn't have the pork loin Hubby was hoping for. Turns out the sausage wasn't such a great substitute; after an enthusiastic dinner of it on Wednesday night, The Boy spent an hour or so crying and producing some mighty evil-smelling poop. Belatedly, Hubby tasted the sausage and declared it surprisingly spicy. Henceforth, the meat-eating adult in this family will be tasting all animal flesh before I make it available to The Boy's tender toddler tummy.

"What about the downtown market?" I ventured hopefully as we pulled away from the tailgate, a whole morning still stretching before us. The downtown tailgate was new, and I envisioned a busy, festive atmosphere. Apparently my Union Square dilettantish farmers market days aren't entirely in my past.

Satisfied that he had done his best to support the folks at our own little tailgate, Hubby agreed.

The downtown market was in a bigger space, and there were more Ashevilleans wandering about, but if you can't grow produce during April in Western Carolina, then you can't grow produce during April in Western Carolina. It doesn't much matter which tailgate market you belong to.

Still, excited by the sights of neighbors and co-workers and better dog-watching for The Boy, I excitedly scooped up two tubs of goat cheese. Hubby dutifully handed me ten dollars before telling me that we were down to the last of our cash and he was hoping to find a pork loin waiting for him here.

Happily, there was, and he even had enough money to pay for it, with a nickel to spare. Between the meat, the goat cheese, and the dogs, we were all three pretty satisfied.

But not too satisfied to make our next stop Target. Because, like many Ashevilleans, I suspect, we love our community supported agriculture, but we still need to spend a little time under the fluorescent lights of a big, artificial box store to lend some balance to our lives.

Going to See the Goats

2008-04-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

On Sunday afternoon Hubby, The Boy, and I took Grandma to the Carl Sandburg House.

Normally, I would not make a point of spending my Sunday afternoon at the home of any famous dead person. I seem to have some kind of allergy to historic homes. The second I enter them the heavy, dust-smelling air turns to cotton wads in my brain, and before I can say, "Hey! Cool antique tea set!" my eyes are drifting closed.

Since I have known Hubby, I have visited historical homes with him only to prove my True Love. The first time, I dutifully feigned interest in colonial methods of spinning wool in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on our way home from a wedding. We weren't even engaged yet, and I suppose the romance of a wedding put me in the mind of working toward one myself. Or maybe it had been so long since I had consented to this sort of outing that I half hoped I would enjoy it, creating another shared activity for the two of us. Lucky we have plenty of others.

Most recently, Hubby and I stopped by a historic home in our historic home of Long Beach. The grounds were lovely, and we were in a part of town unfamiliar to us, so I was happy to be along. But when it came to agreeing to a guided tour of the house, I begged pregnancy and swollen ankles, even though they never really were.

By now, I feel secure enough in my marriage to know that I will never, ever have to go to another historical home with Hubby.

What persuaded me to join in the trip to the Carl Sandburg house on Sunday was the promise that we wouldn't have to tour the house. We were going to see the goats.

We had set out to visit Carl Sandburg's goats before. (I suppose these are more likely descendants of his goats, since he's been dead for a while. I can't say how long because I carefully avoided the plackets bearing information about him and his life. I did read one poem, though, and liked it very much.)

On Thanksgiving Day, when Hubby had to be at work at three o'clock, we cheerily decided to check out downtown Hendersonville, not far distant from the goats. We thought we could find a cozy restaurant serving a turkey-free Thanksgiving meal before tiring The Boy out with a goat encounter. In this way, I would have an actual holiday because he'd be so tired when back home alone with me all afternoon that entertaining him would require nothing more than choosing a movie I could half watch on TiVo and devoting the other half of my attention to whatever it was we used to play with before Christmas and his birthday rained the presents we play with now.

I still marvel at the fact that I was actually surprised to find no restaurants open in historic downtown Hendersonville on Thanksgiving Day. I felt sad and waifish wandering the gray street alongside people plainly walking off too many servings of mashed potatoes. By the time we were ready to concede, we were so hungry that we ditched the goats for a little Mexican restaurant we found on the way home, where we enjoyed being the only gringos among the Spanish-speaking workers and The Boy, not speaking any language, waved corn chips around and considered it a perfectly good Thanksgiving.

There have been other plans to see the goats. But we've never quite made it. Because, don't you know, there are so many fascinating distractions in the vicinity of Asheville.

At any rate, I was anxious to join the family on Sunday, as I had bowed out of their jaunt to the Cradle of Forestry on Saturday. Turns out it involved horses, but The Boy found them terrifying. Better to wait for the goats.

We set out in the car as The Boy settled in for his nap. Usually, having The Boy nap in the car works well -- but usually we are facing a drive of longer than half an hour. The Boy was already suffering from a cold wrought by our indulgently letting him skimp on sleep to spend time with his visiting aunt and cousin earlier in the week. Grandma was around for several more days, and I was adamant that he not be gypped out of his nap.

So we took the long way, winding past the charming mountain sights of car lots and strip malls. We zipped through historic downtown Hendersonville with only the faintest sigh of nostalgia and continued on to the Carl Sandburg House.

We drew near. The Boy snored.

"Let's keep going," I suggested, even though my bladder was suggesting otherwise.

And so, for half an hour more, we wandered, until I and my bladder concluded The Boy had enjoyed sufficient nap time. At which point Hubby concluded that he needed to eat in order to enjoy the goats.

We headed for historic downtown Flatrock, home of the Carl Sandburg House. Although it was not a national holiday, it was a Sunday, and we encountered exactly as many open restaurants as we had on Thanksgiving Day in historic Hendersonville.

Thank goodness for Mexican restaurants. We were decidedly not the only gringos in this one -- in fact, the only people who spoke Spanish (if you don't count my hesitant knowledge of words and phrases useful for conversation with our house cleaner) were the wait staff. But it was surprisingly good, considering the circumstances, and The Boy loves him some refried beans.

We finally pulled into the parking lot of the Carl Sandburg house as the sun, which had been warming up the car during the entire drive, slipped behind a thick padding of clouds. I drew The Boy close to me for warmth and noted with pleasure that we were in a park with trails. Carl Sandburg's house, I was happy to see, was only a minor attraction.

We headed over a little bridge and started up the hill in the direction of the goats. I was deep in the thick of a cold that had my chest feeling like a sack of overcooked grits, so I encouraged The Boy to hitch a ride with Daddy. Nothing doing.

Normally, I would be happy to climb a half mile hill carrying a twenty-five pound boy on a chilly April day after eating three shrimp tacos and stolen bites of The Boy's beans. But I was most uncharacteristically not in the mood for exercise.

The Boy consented to ride on Daddy's shoulders for a few blessed yards, then continued in my arms until we reached the top of the hill and we all decided it might be a good idea if he walked a ways himself.

Letting a newly walking toddler walk two-tenths of a mile under his own steam seems like a good idea only after you've carried him three-tenths of a mile up hill while wheezing from a cold. Especially when he stops every two feet to observe the older children passing him by on their way to the goats.

At some point, I grabbed him and pretended not to notice his squirms of toddler determination, nor his tearful assertions of independence. He'd shut up, I was certain, once he saw the goats.

I wasn't wrong. "Look! Goats!" I cried when they came into view, as if he could remember his past joyful encounter with goats two months ago at Disneyland. Still, they were furry four-legged creatures and patently not horses and therefore, he seemed to figure, worth checking out.

The Boy did find the goats interesting, though not as interesting as the goat dropping riddled sawdust in the barn. The chickens were pretty cool too; but the huge pile of dirt on the other side of the chicken house was even more intriguing. These attractions, as any parent knows, could be avoided only with clever distraction. To my disappointment, eight-day-old goat Thor wasn't much of a distraction, while the historic goat milking house was.

Ah well. The historic goat milking house was only a few rooms sporting very little written information to slow down people like Hubby and Grandma who actually read it. And it was cold enough to prevent me from falling too deeply asleep.

Plus, I discovered, historic homes are more fun with a little boy running joyously ahead of you and then turning to peer through doorways with a gap-toothed grin spread across his face.

Family Fun

2008-04-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Lately, I have, for some reason, become acutely aware of the life cycle of a "typical" person's desire to spend time with her family. (A disclaimer here: I have no idea what a "typical" person entails, really, and insufficient knowledge to take cultural differences into account. Nor do I possess the proper scientific background to support my claims. But I couldn't figure out any other way to phrase it, since what I'm about to say doesn't exactly describe me, and I can't speak for anyone else.)

We are born with an intense desire to spend time with our parents, especially any of them who happen to be breast feeding. I see this stage manifested in The Boy's bellows of "Mommy!" even when the second Mommy picks him up he kicks his legs and pikes energetically in a move designed to make her drop him one day if she isn't careful.

Some time between the age of The Boy's youngest cousin -- who is 11 and loves to spend time with her family -- and her brother -- who is 14 and begged off coming to visit us last week with some excuse that sounded to me like it had to do with washing the car (although his mother insists he's done no such thing this week or ever) -- things change. We enter that stage of adolescent cantankerousness that includes a violent aversion to anything that smacks of spending time with one's family. Eventually, we grow out of adolescence into something approximating adulthood, and we like spending time with our families again.

Some of us, it turns out, never really make it to that adulthood stage.

For example, I've been married to Hubby for almost four years, lived with him for almost five, and I'm just now getting the hang of wanting to hang out with family.

It could be that I merely entered the adolescent aversion stage a bit late. I recall my mother cleverly delaying it when I was in my early teens with frequent Saturday shopping trips on her credit card. It probably helped that my sister went away to college just as I hit my teenage years and packed enough parental hostility into her trips home for the both of us. Plus, I figured I kind of scored getting to be the only child at an age where I could appreciate it.

But somewhere along the line it finally kicked in, and -- as my recent move from 15 miles south of my parents' house to 2,500 miles east illustrates -- I haven't really recovered.

I was getting there -- at least where Hubby's family was concerned -- in the first couple years of my marriage. Hubby is one of those curious sorts who never seems to have gone through the aversion stage. I still marvel at how it is possible to cram three siblings, multiple significant others, and an abundance of children into a medium-sized house during a cold St. Louis Christmas and never hear a single voice raised in anything but excitement over opening and playing with gifts.

At first, I approached this family closeness with caution and no small amount of suspicion. It may not speak well of me, but I have to confess that the first thing I think of when I am planning a vacation is not whether my mother would like to come along. I frankly felt a little bit pressured, as if I was expected to find the same comfort in family gatherings as Hubby.

Instead, I contorted myself into a pretzel of anguish over trying to be a family member. I mean, I knew I was, but I didn't see how that earned me the right to automatically fit in. I felt like I had to pass unspoken challenges and gather points along the way to some unknown destination, like half of a team on The Amazing Race. (My partner, sadly, had no idea we were racing anywhere, and spent our family visits basking in the midst of this game I was still learning to play, making me feel like the person who twists her ankle and grimly limps toward certain elimination.)

But eventually it dawned on me that Hubby's family weren't a bunch of judges on a reality show, but just a bunch of people who loved me because he did. And then loved me just because.

This is not an easy concept for many people to understand. You mean, families just love you? Unconditionally? In books and Hallmark Hall of Fame movies, sure, but in real life?

And then, two years ago, I got pregnant and it started to make sense in a way that does not lend itself to explanation because, frankly, there is none. I had done the unconditional love thing with my basset hound Roxanne, but an awful lot of people don't get the love-your-dog-like-your-child thing. Being pregnant with a human being put me on the same playing field as my in-laws.

Until, that is, I had The Boy and discovered the whole new web of tensions that come with a baby -- a web that seems to start and end with a new mother's hormones. Still, much as I'm willing to take the lion's share of the blame, the truth is that different understandings of what family means come rushing to the surface when there's an infant in the house.

And so I entered a whole new cycle of fretting about what Hubby's family thought of me. Did they look down on me as the first of the family to use disposable diapers? (The water, the energy of washing cloth ones!) Did they think less of me for my less than abundant milk supply? (No, more! both mother- and sister-in-law cried when they saw what I went through to avoid putting The Boy on formula in a bottle.) Surely they found me a bit selfish for preferring to calm my crying baby myself instead of passing him along so I could take a break and a nap.

By the end of each visit, my mother-in-law and I would have a drink or two together and proclaim our undying love for each other, our admiration for the other's role in my son's life, a desire to wipe the slate clean of all the normal spats that come with family. "I love you, guy!" we seemed to cry, like fraternity brothers seeped in the camaraderie of too much keg beer and a soggy yearning for some ill-defined approximation of brotherhood.

But, alas, my mother-in-law would depart and I would sober up, return to my quiet life with my small, immediate family, and panic when I saw how excited Hubby became when we began planning the next family get-together.

Until this week. When, for whatever reason, I have emerged from the fog of youthful rebellion against all things grounding, and have embraced being a 40-ish mother hosting barbeques for three generations of her family and looking an awful lot like an ad in Martha Stewart Living. I imagine all of us caught in the frame with laughs of adoring family joy as we point at The Boy gripping the chair of his cousin and putting his beaming baby face up to hers. We are soft, un-funky, lit by the easy caress of a suburban sunset, and selling something like a cheap boxed wine.

[NB: We most definitely do not live in the suburbs, but that's the point -- feeling like I'm completely myself at a family barbeque veers dangerously close to this territory.]

Many of you are aware that I've lately committed myself to another blog, http://yogamamame.blogspot.com. (Ooh, was that blatant self-promotion? Good for me -- I'm usually so terrible at it.) It consists of me mulling over a daily dilemma raised by trying to achieve personhood while dealing with motherhood in a way I find personally amusing, and then addressing the dilemma with some principles of yoga that I probably won't actually follow myself. So much easier to be the teacher than the student.

Only, it turns out, I have been teaching myself something. Because in all my writing about untangling the knots into which we tie ourselves (both mentally and physically) I seem to have straightened myself out a bit. I've let go of fretting over what my in-laws expect of me and whether they like me and whether they think Hubby made a big, huge mistake or just confounded them with an odd choice in a life partner. I stopped trying to fit in and just fit.

And so I found myself relaxing on our deck on a soft spring evening punctuated by the shrill, almost-teenager cries of my nieces, sharing parental laughter with my sisters-in-law, and granting myself a place in the tableau of what she has created spread before my mother-in-law's eyes. The wine I am drinking, by the way, is pretty cheap, but we bought it at Trader Joe's, so that makes it okay.

And therein lies the secret. I can drink cheap wine and shop at Trader Joe's. I can be a mom in her 40's and still have a kick-ass yoga practice. And I can be part of a family I want to spend time with without losing the little edges that make me me.

In fact, now that I'm looking at it from the inside, I see that this family has some pretty interesting edges itself. If you care to spend enough time with it to appreciate them.

The Boy's First Ball Game

2008-04-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

Actually, we haven't yet been to The Boy's first actual baseball game. But we did spend a lovely hour or so at the ball park yesterday.

Asheville, I was thrilled to discover recently, is home to an A farm team for the Colorado Rockies. Not yet entirely adjusted to no longer living in a Major League city, I was sort of hoping that "A" ranked higher than "AA" and "AAA." I guess I was thinking about something like The A-Team; surely Mr. T wouldn't be a member of the A-Team if the AA-Team was better.

However, Hubby carefully explained to me, in baseball, the A team is, in his words, "one step above the Rookie League." I didn't even know there was such a thing. I guess growing up going to baseball games in a Major League city is sort of like buying your meat at the supermarket; it comes all cut up and inspected and wrapped up in cellophane so you have no idea where it really comes from.

Still, I've always wanted to go to a farm team game and I've never been, unless you count owning Bull Durham on video.

Hubby brought up the idea of taking The Boy to an Asheville Tourists game earlier in the week. (Doesn't the team name just make you want to come visit us? If so, don't read yesterday's post.) Good weather was predicted, we had no other plans, and we're always on the lookout for things to do with The Boy on weekends. Not that we desperately need him to go to school five days a week or anything.

The idea hovered in the air all week, bringing with it no concrete action, like, say, buying tickets. For some reason, I figured this was because we didn't have to worry about getting tickets in advance. We're not talking about Dodger Stadium, after all. It never dawned on me that, while Hubby has many strong points, buying tickets to anything ahead of time is not one of them. ("Do you think we should buy our tickets?" I recall asking one year three weeks before we were supposed to fly to Hawaii for Thanksgiving.)

And so, yesterday, we began our Sunday morning in eager anticipation of the Tourists' 2:00 start time. We ate breakfast, played, and read the paper secure in the knowledge that we had something exciting to do with the rest of our day.

By 11:00, Hubby announced that he was bored.

"We could go to breakfast," I said, as the only member of the family who'd not yet eaten any. Then I thought about the need to fit The Boy's nap in between the present moment and the 2:00 game time. "Except you already ate."

"I can always eat more," Hubby cried eagerly, halfway out the door. Did I mention he was bored?

He was also excited to introduce me to a new cafe downtown, where all the coffee is fair trade, all the food is organic, and there is excellent people-watching to be done by a 15-month-old boy. We settled ourselves at a table that afforded a perfect perch from which The Boy could loudly announce, "Dawh! Dawh!" at the sight of each passing pooch outside the windows.

He even gobbled down a whole sausage patty, making his meat-eating father inordinately proud. But by noon he still didn't seem nap-inclined.

"Let's take a walk and tire him out," Hubby suggested.

We concocted a vague plan. Before the start of the game we needed to: a) get The Boy to nap; b) buy tickets; and c) get some baby sunblock, since I had sent both of the tubes we had to The Boy's school after he broke out in a rash when they put the regular, reasonably priced stuff on him. It was hard enough buying a tube to take to his school at $17.99 for a few ounces; I just couldn't bring myself to purchase the additional one we would obviously need at home.

For some reason, the sunblock shopping was put off until later, and we walked in the direction of the stadium with some vague words about simultaneously tiring The Boy out and buying tickets. Then, I suppose, we were going to walk back to the car and drive around for an hour while The Boy slept before parking the car at the stadium, within walking distance of where it was currently parked. This made perfect sense to us, as do many things that shouldn't, because we are parents.

There is a certain joy you feel sad to know can't last in seeing your child doing his toddler run down sidewalks for the first time. Initially, The Boy carefully held onto my hand, letting go only for detours to every plate glass window that reflected a smiling little boy back at him. Then he got the hang of it and performed a scooting, wide-legged run down the hills, stopping every few steps to right himself or investigate a bottle top or cigarette butt strewn at the side of the road.

We made our way to a deserted playground on the east side of town, where he cheerfully climbed and slid and put wood chips in his mouth. But he still didn't seem all that tired.

"Should we put him in the car and drive him around?" Hubby asked.

I pointed out that we had the Times with us and no need to be at the park by 2:00, since The Boy was unlikely to last a full nine innings, even at an A-team game.

So, back to the car we hiked. We strapped The Boy in and headed in the direction of the stadium. "Where are we going?" I asked Hubby, unsure of what my plan was but fairly certain that we had agreed to do some other things before going to the game.

"I thought we should get tickets now," Hubby answered. It seemed a reasonable suggestion, with just an hour to go before game time. Then, I figured, we could buy sunblock.

To our surprise, the stadium was already bustling with patrons and the buzz of a ballpark on a Sunday afternoon.

"I'm not sure what to do," Hubby said, as we drove by.

"Let me out. I'll get the tickets," I said. By which time we found a parking spot that seemed too good not to take.

Since The Boy was still wide awake and intrigued by this adventure, we grabbed him and headed for the ticket booth together. No sooner had Hubby locked the car doors than a shifty-looking guy sidled up to him.

"Already have tickets?" he asked.

Wow, I thought to myself, not only do games sell out here, but there are actual scalpers.

"No," said Hubby, no doubt thinking something along the same lines.

Without a word, the man held up two tickets. He stared down at them with hooded eyes, avoiding Hubby's gaze.

Hubby reached for them. "Are they--?" he asked.

The man gave a slight wave over his shoulder as he departed, leaving the tickets in Hubby's still outstretched hand.

Unused to small towns and small town A-team ball games, my first thought was that we would be arrested upon presenting the tickets at the turnstile. I am ashamed to admit it, but it's true.

"They're general admission," Hubby said with an apologetic shrug. "He didn't say anything," he added, as if to explain why he took the tickets, why he didn't offer the guy some money for them, why we did not deserve to be arrested.

"If they're only general admission, maybe he had some extra and was just being nice," I said hopefully.

So now we had tickets, a parking space, and a wide-awake boy. "We still don't have sunblock," Hubby pointed out.

"He's wearing his hat," I said, sort of amazed that The Boy hadn't pulled off his little red baseball cap as soon as I put it on. Plainly there were too many sights distracting him.

"You know, we also forgot to bring the camera, and it's his first ball game," Hubby said somewhat sadly.

I agreed this was a shame, but we've been so lousy about taking pictures of The Boy lately that I'm getting used to it. Plus, only videos can capture the joy of him walking and saying "Dawh" and "Cah" (trans. "Dog" and "Car"), and we don't know how to post our videos so others can enjoy them, so I don't bother much with them either.

At any rate, it seemed decided for us. Or, at least, our poor planning skills had made it so. We were going to the ball park with a boy in need of a nap and sunblock, an hour before game time, without so much as a camera to record the event.

It didn't matter once we stepped into the stadium. Even with just a few food stands and a few more beer stands, the ballpark feeling melted over me. I spent two summers as an usher at Dodger Stadium when I was in college and likely absorbed so much hot dog grease that it lies latent in my system until activated by the sights and sounds of a stadium and then bursts forth in a splash of excitement for summer and childhood and the clean lines of a baseball diamond.

We passed under banners featuring famous past players for the Asheville Tourists -- Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Willie Stargell, and Cal Ripken among them. I pointed excitedly at them and felt part of two things at once -- both Major League Baseball with its circuit of big cities featuring huge stadiums and the smaller towns that feed it, home to parks where kids can still line up to have players autograph their gloves.

It turns out the General Admission seats were all in the sun -- and not really seats, just concrete risers where the folks who plan for such things spread out their portable chairs while they hide in the shade waiting for the game to start.

Hubby suggested we might warm someone else's seats in the hopes that they not show up and with the all purpose excuse a baby provides in case they did. So we made our way to some in the back, right next to the McDonald's Family Section that, Hubby pointed out with alarm, is alcohol free. We made a note of seat numbers to make sure we don't sit there if ever we manage to buy tickets ahead of time.

We settled in to the sounds of the announcer and the piped-in music, and the field as close to us in the last row as it is to season ticket holders at Dodger Stadium. The Boy munched on a soft pretzel with relish and watched the other kids with wide, serious eyes. After a while, he got a hang of the place, and left our laps to wander the length of the bench and smile at the man sitting at the end drinking a beer.

The announcement that start time had been delayed by an estimated hour came as we were watching them spread some kind of absorbent dirt over the field in what seemed to me to be a feeble attempt to dry it out after the previous night's rain. It wasn't looking good. Plus, The Boy had just decided it was time for him to sit on the ground and play.

"I'm afraid there are peanut shells down there," said Hubby of the peanut allergy. Not that a few peanut shells on the ground bother him, but his son who we suspect has inherited his allergy and who wanted to sit amongst them and likely put them in his mouth was another story.

"He's never going to take his nap here," I sighed. "And he doesn't care if we see the game or not. Plus, we got in for free," I added.

"I don't mind leaving," Hubby agreed. I think it had more to do with the fact that he could tell himself this didn't count as The Boy's first ball game and thus not feel bad about forgetting the camera than with anything I had said.

So we went home, making one person looking for a parking space almost as happy as our dogs.

I don't know if The Boy's enthusiastic response to his first almost-baseball game makes him more my son or his father's. Hubby, after all, still cares to follow baseball, watches games on t.v., and once even played on a team in his youth. I, on the other hand, have grown to appreciate the atmosphere of the ballpark more than the games. I'll always think of the major league season as it was when I went to Dodgers games with my father -- before realignment, when the play-offs were just five games, and when Marge Schott hadn't yet made me too embarrassed to be a Cincinnati Reds fan.

Whatever the reason, we all three love going to a game, and I know my family will be returning to see the Asheville Tourists play. Maybe we'll even get season tickets.

And when the next Jackie Robinson or Willie Stargell makes it to the major leagues, my son will be able to say he saw them up close when they played for his hometown team in Asheville.

Spring Visitors

2008-04-05T12:30:00.001-07:00

My friend Steve flew in from Washington, D.C., last weekend (via Detroit -- no joke) and thus earned the title of our first Spring visitor. (And possibly last, after this story.)

I prepared for the trip by sending him links to information about absolutely every fabulous place I could think to take him.

There weren't many, so I was slightly puzzled when he emailed me back with a comment about how busy we'd be. I was certain that my pull-out-all-the-stops Asheville-and-vicinity itinerary would yield just enough entertainment to fill his 72 hours here and send him home with fond memories of Asheville but no need to return because, to be honest, there wouldn't be anything left to do. (Not that we don't want you return, Steve, if you're reading this.)

We started out, I thought, almost promisingly. He seemed to enjoy the half mile walk to The Boy's school ("I guess yours is the one running toward you," he observed when we arrived, no great kid person that he is), despite the hills. But almost as soon as we returned home I discovered I had sent Hubby off to work with the car seat car. Yes, loathe to capitulate entirely to frumpy parenthood, we own only one car that can accommodate The Boy's car seat. It is, unfortunately, also the only car we own that can accommodate the lawnmower Hubby took to get serviced that day. Which meant that Steve had to go pick up the pizza I ordered for the sitter on his own.

I know it's a little bit unusual to send your guest who's been in town all of two hours out by himself to pick up pizza, but all concerned agreed that option was far preferable to him staying home with The Boy. Besides, it's a pretty small town, and I felt confident he'd make it back.

Once the pizza and sitter were firmly in place, I was anxious to show Steve our lively downtown. He did me the favor of admiring it, both on the way for pre-dinner drinks and even more enthusiastically on our way to the restaurant, well oiled with martinis. And when we saw folks heading for the drum circle after dinner, he didn't even bat an eyelash, though I'm not certain he really knew what a drum circle is.

The real sense that we might not offer our friends a gala get-away weekend started the next morning. To his credit, Steve is not a high maintenance guest. Throw a couple of cinnamon raisin bagels from the shop around the corner at him for breakfast, and he can take care of himself. It's just that by 11:00 I imagine he was getting a little bit tired of watching us run around gathering supplies for an afternoon out with a toddler. As I may have mentioned, Steve will be the last person to label himself a lover of kids, although he did spend a good deal of his morning on the floor with the dogs. So, really, in retrospect, I think we were all okay.

To be fair, part of what was making entertainment difficult was the threat of rain. Asheville is sort of an outdoor place -- not many big museums or other indoor attractions, unless you count the Mall, which I don't.

So as soon as it started to clear, we went into action mode. Out the door, diaper bag in tow, and off to the Western Carolina Nature Center we went. This was one attraction I could wave at Steve with a feeling that we do live in a place worth the price of his plane ticket (and the time spent in the Detroit Airport). Steve is a big lover of the animals, especially wolves, and our Nature Center has them. A few were even out, looking soggy and annoyed, but willing to have their picture taken.

Then it was off for an authentic (as far as we know) lunch of Native American food, the highlights of which, I gathered, were the alligator bites and the fry bread. (Not "fried bread," Hubby scolded me. Just "fry bread.")

On my own, I would have started apologizing at this point. Steve had 48 more hours to spend in Asheville, and I couldn't think of anything rousing to do in the almost rain. We'd pretty much covered downtown last night -- its size seems charming and manageable when you plan correctly, but comes back to bite you when you take an evening walk after dinner and wipe out your plans for most of the following day.

Luckily, I now have Hubby to make up for my shortcomings as a hostess. He suggested that Steve might want to see Hendersonville, home of the camp where he was a counselor 30 years ago. (30? I'm doing the math now and I wonder if Steve stopped counting somewhere along the way.)

So we spent a few hours in Hendersonville, which I wouldn't include on the itinerary of future travelers who haven't been camp counselors there in the past, but satisfied Steve just fine.

It was Sunday when it began to dawn on me that friends come to see you, not the town in which you live. Steve kindly showed interest in our drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but brunch at Tupelo Honey was probably a bigger highlight for him. By dinner it was okay to go to a recommended sushi restaurant in a strip mall because if he had any opinion of Asheville, he'd formed it already, and taking him to a strip mall restaurant wasn't going to make me seem any less cool than I am. Which is cool enough to not like the idea of eating at strip mall restaurants but not so cool that I refuse to do it.

We spent Monday morning walking Audrey, and I finally got it. I've known Steve for 14 years. He's the one who brought me dinner the night after I had surgery on my toes and discovered I couldn't make it off my couch to find food. (To this day, I wonder why I told him a plain bagel would satisfy my hunger when I hadn't eaten all day and, even more, why he believed me.) He let me use his guest room for extended stays when I lived in Williamsburg and sanity demanded that I escape to DC every chance I had. He always spent some part of his visits to St. Louis fixing something in my house. Even when he visited us in Long Beach, where there were plenty of activities on offer, he took the time to play photographer for the last of my series of Roxanne holiday cards.

So, really, I was judging Asheville when Steve had no intention of judging it himself. I've always lived in destination cities -- Los Angeles, New York, DC. Even Williamsburg annually hosts more tourists than most U.S. cities, though I'm not sure why. And when I lived in St. Louis I was on a quest to show my coastal friends that there really is a thing or two to do in the midwest. There was always so much city to help with the entertaining I somehow forgot which one of us my friends were visiting.

Not that Asheville isn't a lovely place to see as well. There's the Nature Center and the Biltmore Estate, the galleries downtown, and the Grove Park Inn, and the Folk Art Center. But they all -- with the exception of the Biltmore Estate -- seem so unassuming next to the places I'm used to taking visitors.

And that, I suppose, is the crux of what I discovered as we head into our spring visitor season. When people come to visit me here, they will see that at some point over my years of living in destination cities, I've become a person who lives in Asheville. Someone who plays with her child until 11:00 on a Saturday, heads out to some local attraction, and might even go out to dinner in a strip mall.

Okay, so I'm no longer the young, single woman hopping amongst the bars on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. My friends love me anyhow, or so they tell me. They love who I am now, not who I think I used to be, and I don't need to apologize for it any more than I need to apologize for Asheville.

Besides, come to think of it, I never really spent much time in those Columbus Avenue bars even when I could.

The Boy Gets an Easter Basket

2008-03-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

It's an Easter bag, actually. Cute and pink, sporting a big bunny head with a sparkly nose. The Boy is entranced by the pink, sparkly pictures in his That's Not My Mermaid book, and I see nothing wrong with this fact, so when I spotted the sparkly pink felt Easter bag at Target, I grabbed it.

It fit perfectly into how I imagined The Boy's first cognizant Easter would go. I pictured him playing with baby rabbits in a sun-dappled field. He would wear a shirt with a collar and no wrinkles and little man-pants. His hair would be abundant enough to be gelled into a movie star handsome do.

Plainly I watched too many J.C. Penny Easter commercials during the days before I got TiVo and began skipping commercials entirely.

Still, I had high hopes for Easter morning as I snuck his bag of Easter goodies and Hubby's token chocolate bunny onto the mantel. I had baked Easter cookies that afternoon, and Hubby was even talking about dying Easter eggs.

Then, at 10:30 Saturday night came the cry of a boy who has eaten too many of said Easter cookies. He arched. He yelled. He stared pleadingly at me with tear-swollen eyes, begging me for more Tylenol, please.

Hubby took his cue and headed for the daybed in the office.

I arranged pillows around the bed and removed The Boy's sleep sac so he could cuddle under the covers with me for the night. Which plainly meant it was breakfast time.

I spent about an hour trying to convince him otherwise, but in the end The Boy and I had a fine time playing in the living room at 2 a.m. as I caught up on old episodes of Eli Stone. Eventually, we headed back to bed, drunk on the novelty of doing what so many normal people do late on a Saturday night.

The difference between us is that The Boy was happy to rise before 8, secure in the notion that a nap would be waiting whenever his late-night revelry caught up with him. I, on the other hand, working with 5 1/2 hours of sleep and the unfamiliar sensation of drinking lots of red wine and not brushing my teeth before going to bed, was not quite ready to greet Easter morning.

By all accounts, Hubby and The Boy had a lovely Easter morning while I stayed in bed. Then I anchored the play -- excuse me, living room while Hubby banged about in the kitchen making an omelet for me and pancakes for him and The Boy. Which were almost ready for the griddle when The Boy's late-night revelry did in fact catch up to him.

Hubby and I ate our Easter brunch a little guiltily, watched over by The Boy's empty chair and the goodies still crowding the mantle.

He awakened from a good long nap after 3. Perhaps not the traditional time for hunting Easter eggs -- and we had none to hunt since no one had been up to making them -- but still with plenty of daylight left, thanks to the ridiculously early onset of daylight savings.

My sunny Easter scenario, however, was still doomed, as the ample sunlight was a poor match for the arctic winds sweeping across our yard. The Boy, it seemed, would receive his first Easter basket in our living room wearing jeans and a stained South Bay Cardinals baseball shirt.

Still excited, I beckoned him to the mantle. "Give this to Daddy," I instructed, handing him a bag of foil-wrapped chocolate eggs.

Off he set, throwing his feet in outward-reaching arcs as he baby-walked his way to his father and proffered the gift.

I called him back and handed him a chocolate bunny. "Give this to Daddy," I said.

Warming to the game, he wobbled around the stroller and placed the chocolate bunny in his Daddy's hands.

"One more!" I called. It was getting more difficult to rouse him, but I managed to coax him back to deliver a final Easter treat to his father, as well as a bag of blue tennis balls for the dogs.

Too late I realized that, although our camera remains in Charleston (or wherever the thief has taken it), we do have a video camera. How could I have failed to record the unparalleled sight of my 15-month-old son making his determined and unsteady way to his father proudly bearing Easter gifts?

I grabbed the camera and reclaimed the chocolate bunny, then resumed my place by the mantel.

"Sweetie," I cried. "One more!"

He gazed at me with a quizzical look. Hadn't he already delivered all the Easter gifts? That bunny looked suspiciously familiar.

"I need you to bring this to Daddy," I urged.

He made his way over and trustingly held out his hands. I plopped the bunny in them and began videotaping his knees, reasoning that once he began walking toward his father he would fit into the frame and our loved ones would understand why we had sent them this video clip.

Only the knees didn't move out of the frame.

I put down the camera. The Boy gravely shoved the chocolate bunny back at me, somewhat hurt that I had abused his trust in this manner.

"Wait, no, bring it to Daddy," I entreated, once again filming his knees as they backed out of sight. He didn't even make it into the frame because I was too busy pointing the camera at the floor as I waved the chocolate bunny enticingly at him.

We have no video of our child on Easter. You will have to imagine the rest yourself.

I took The Boy's Easter bag off the mantle and sat on the floor with him and Hubby. He was busy taking the dogs' tennis ball away from Lilah as she stared at him with a combination of hope that he would throw it for her and annoyance that he plainly wasn't going to.

"Give Lilah her ball," I suggested. "And see what's in your Easter bag."

The Boy glanced over. Apparently the pink sparkly things in his That's Not My Mermaid book are better than the bag bunny's sparkly, pink nose. With a gesture of indifference, he turned his attention back to the blue tennis ball.

"It ought to say 'Tennis Balls for Little Boys,'" Hubby offered unhelpfully, pointing to the tag that read 'Tennis Balls for Dogs,' presumably to avoid extreme disappointment when a human being tried to actually use them in a game of tennis.

We did eventually convince The Boy to show some interest in his Easter bag. Mostly by taking the blue tennis balls away. For his own good, we assured him as he wailed.

The wind-up chick did quiet him down, though I suspect his silence was more indicative of terror than fascination, as the chick hopped across the leather couch. He liked the wind-up rabbit that poops jelly beans more, but we ruined it by snatching away the jelly beans as they fell, muttering, "Choking hazard," as if that information would comfort him. He did find the bunny ears kind of a good joke, but I was too wise to try to videotape him wearing them. A camera would have come in quite handy.

I did make one big score. The organic gummy fruit heaped at the bottom of his bag was a big hit, once he figured out how to chew it. Of course, I took them away once he'd had three or four and ate the rest myself.

"Why only three?" our neighbor asked a little while later when The Boy and I were out visiting their dogs.

I had thought the answer was obvious when she bemoaned trying to get her sugar-crazed daughter down for a much needed nap. Yet somehow at the moment she asked, that answer vanished, sucked away by the realization of what Easter is.

Easter is not a time for well scrubbed young children to daintily drop purple and yellow Easter eggs into beribboned baskets. It is not a day when any parent in her right mind would adopt a fuzzy baby rabbit just for the chance to see her offspring cuddling it against a milky cheek.

No, Easter, I now realize, is a day when I must let my child eat straight high fructose corn syrup thinly disguised as Peeps until it comes out his ears. It is the day when my child will teach me that, contrary to popular belief, chocolate has just as much caffeine as coffee, at least if you eat enough of it.

Forget about resurrection and rebirth and spring springing after a long winter.

Easter is the day when I am reminded to let go and let him eat junk food and watch my boy grow up.

Why We Have No Pictures of Our Trip to Charleston

2008-03-20T11:46:00.000-07:00

We were driving down I-77 on our way to Charleston when my friend Julie called. The Boy snoozed deeply in his car seat, exhausted from a whirlwind of Trader Joe's, suburban toy store where he claimed for his own a pink and camouflage soccer ball, and lunch at a restaurant with lots of noise and people to smile at. The sun was shining, we had a real vacation ahead of us, and I hadn't found the time to chat on the phone in weeks.

"Take lots of pictures," Julie said before ending our call.

"Oh, of course," I assured her. Hubby and I are feeling more than a little bit guilty about the fact that we haven't taken pictures of our son since Christmas. He is now 25% older than he was then and has at least 25% more hair.

We arrived at the coast in the late afternoon, bypassing downtown for our hotel in the suburbs of Mt. Pleasant. This is how grown-up parenthood has made us. When booking a hotel, I felt that traveler reviews of the cheap beachside one noting "black stuff on the bathroom floor" surely justified upgrading to the Homewood Suites by Hilton. Even more startling, Hubby agreed.

So here we were, in The Boy's ideal vacation playground. Living room stretched into bedroom opened into vanity ending in a mirrored closet door perfect for smearing one's hands on and making funny grinning faces at. Carpet covered all floors in one continuous piece so one's newly walking feet did not have to adjust to changes in texture, nor practice the difficult art of not tripping over the edges of area rugs. There were TWO television sets with on/off buttons within easy reach, and Mommy and Daddy didn't seem to care one bit how many times they were pushed. Perhaps best of all, there were no hounds knocking one over, licking one in the face, or otherwise causing frustration. Nor were there hounds to feed at mealtime, but that hardly mattered when so many other joys awaited.

True to my word, I took many pictures in the hotel room: The Boy carrying his new pink and camouflage soccer ball; The Boy looking out the window into the parking lot; The Boy playing with his reflection in the mirrored closet.

The next morning we started out for a day downtown with a well-packed diaper bag, changes of clothes, and, of course, the camera.

It is worth taking a moment to say that Charleston is a really lovely city. My eyes drank in the ocean, my nostrils opened eagerly to the smell of salt air, and my heart sang with the joy of walking and walking and walking amidst a constant swirl of pedestrians, shops, and restaurants. My skin felt a bit left out, as it waited eagerly for the warm sunshine I had promised myself, but, alas, 73 degrees is 73 degrees, and when you're on the ocean it is sometimes even colder.

After parking the car and engaging in much coaxing, running, and swerving, we finally got The Boy to settle into his stroller. He spotted a dog, pointed and yelled joyfully, and forgot for a few moments the indignity of sitting way down at adult hip level while the rest of us saw the world from a more advantageous height. We pointed out the horse-drawn carriages that fill the historic downtown streets, and he gazed with serious interest, trying to figure out how to categorize these dog-like creatures that were even bigger than Audrey.

And then we found the playground.

What joy to watch your little one taking the straddled, Frankenstein steps of new walkers, climbing the stairs to the slide, and then skillfully turning himself around and sliding down feet first on his belly. He really didn't need his mother, except when his second foot got stuck and threatened to remain at the top of the slide as the rest of his body proceeded toward the bottom.

Feeling a deep appreciation of the public space inspired by a long, long Asheville winter, I struck up a conversation with another mother. I never even noticed Hubby adding to our collection of pictures of The Boy. I certainly didn't take note of where the camera was when I returned with The Boy to the top of the slide and yelled at Hubby to take his position at the bottom. It wasn't until some time before we realized we had lost one of The Boy's shoes on the streets of Charleston that we realized we had left the camera in the playground.

To be honest, I was more upset about the shoe than the camera. New cameras can be purchased with a shrug of "it happens" and a comforting "it's okay" meal at Sticky Fingers (home of the Stephen Colbert portrait) for Hubby. But justifying another $40 for really cute blue Chuck Taylor-like shoes with laces that must be painstakingly double-knotted or tied every other minute is more difficult. We stopped at the Target just across the parking lot from our hotel (did I mention how convenient it is to stay in the 'burbs with children?) and bought him some sandals, but it just wasn't the same.

Nor was using the video camera to record his rounds on the pirate ship slide at the Charleston Aquarium. In fact, I was having way too much fun watching him lurch excitedly between tanks full of fish to be bothered with trying to record something we won't be able to figure out how to post on You Tube anyhow.

We headed home with The Boy wearing his new Target socks without shoes and no pictures to memorialize these fleeting, joyful days with our almost-fifteen-month-old. Incidentally, my hair dryer stayed in Charleston as well, completing our trifecta of lost things.

I could mourn the loss of precious reminders of The Boy growing up, but it would be a much better use of my time to just buy a new camera. After all, less than 24 hours after our arrival home The Boy had new shoes and I had a new hair dryer.

But sometimes I think things happen for a reason. Not that some stranger really needs pictures of our boy enjoying his time in the Homewood Suites. But it never hurts to be reminded to watch my child growing up with both eyes and my whole heart and no need for a camera in the way.

YogaMamaMe

2008-03-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

So I've got this great story to tell about our trip last weekend to Charleston and losing our camera and one of Jack's shoes and eating seafood and barbeque and staying at the Homewood Suites in Mt. Pleasant. But in the two days since we've been back in Asheville, I haven't had a minute to write it.

I've been waylaid, you see, by another blog.

"Another blog?" you cry. "Why would you devote time to yet another set of ramblings that perhaps promote good writing discipline and at best amuse a reader or two but are otherwise pretty useless when you have a child to care for, responsibility to contribute to the household income, yoga classes to attend?"

I blame one of the ushers at our wedding.

Being an usher at our wedding is not the most significant thing about this person. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it has totally slipped his mind that he performed this honorary feat. But the fact that he was an usher at our wedding speaks to the importance of his friendship with Hubby, as well as his ill-defined obligation to be nice to me as the wife of his good friend.

This is frightening territory because he is, you see, a literary agent. Because he is both a literary agent and had the honor of ushering guests at our wedding he has graciously listened to many, many great book ideas float out of my mouth. The thriller that turns on a protagonist with a disability and some provision of the ADA. (I never worked out just which one, but I had this misguided notion that writing what you know includes your legal area of expertise.) The first-person mostly fictional narrative about a 39-year-old woman living in Long Beach and trying to get pregnant. (It is fiction, really, and made the semi-finals in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel contest to prove it. Emphasis on "Novel.") And now, YogaMamaMe.

YogaMamaMe: How to Be Mindful When Your Mind Is on Your Baby is my current brilliant this-will-get-me-published idea. It combines all the things I think I'm pretty good at (with the exception of law, which I am pretty good at but don't really care to emphasize any more than is financially necessary). Practicing yoga. Teaching yoga. Writing witty, self-deprecating anecdotes about my not-very-interesting life. And being the mother of a toddler.

The usher-agent wrote me a very kind email on Monday suggesting I start a blog on the subject so I have some sort of presence on which I can sell publishers. Hopefully a large audience is not a prerequisite to having an internet "presence."

Because I read this email when we arrived home from Charleston on Monday night, it was only natural that I spend all my free time on Tuesday writing a post. And all my free time today. And now it's 2:30 and I have just two hours to do the legal work that pays for all this useless blogging before I pick The Boy up from preschool and do the mothering thing that is supposed to sell my YogaMamaMe authority. (Sadly, the yoga part is taking a break today, as it does most Wednesdays when the huge stretch of time alone in the house to accomplish legions of work seems to slip away like my consulting checks in the Lucky Jeans store.)

I will write about our weekend in Charleston before it becomes a distant memory, I promise. In the meantime, if you really care enough for me to promise you more of my pithy stories, take a look at http://yogamamame.blogspot.com/ And if you know someone else who might appreciate it (say, more than stories about some woman she doesn't know living in a town she hasn't heard of), pass the information on.

I'll get me an internet presence yet.

Hanging Up For Good -- Homage to The Wire

2008-03-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Wire ended last night, and I'm feeling really sad.

"It's just a television show," Hubby shrugged as I lamented the sudden hole in my life. Then he turned away to wash the dishes, and I swear he swatted a tear out of the corner of his eye.

The Wire, as Hubby well knows, is not just a television show. It's the best television show ever. It's a rich novel he and I read together, carried along over the years of our relationship. We worked as a team to figure it out, squinting with concentration as we tried to follow Lester's logic. We'd pretzel together, my face buried in his chest whenever I worried that Bubbles was going to get hurt. Together we rewound every bit of dialog Omar uttered and tried to translate it word for word, rarely with success. Often I'd laugh at something Bunc mumbled around the cigar fixed in his mouth and Hubby would turn to me to explain. "I don't know what he said," I'd admit. "It was just funny."

I'll cop to getting a tad too attached to some books so when the end came I felt the same kind of sadness I experienced every year as I cleaned out my college dorm room and flew home to Los Angeles -- lonely, a bit adrift, vaguely displaced. I still remember crying the hot summer night I finished And Ladies of the Club . . . , though I can no longer recall a single detail of character or plot. I can easily retrieve the choking sensation that rose up through my chest all three times I finished Gone with the Wind, and the last time was over 25 years ago. Even the end of Harry Potter left me a little bit misty eyed, even though my attachment to the series was so fraught with ambivalence that I spent much of my time trying to figure out what past events the characters kept referring to.

I am a firm believer in the humanity of well drawn characters. As they speed toward their fate in the last few pages of a book to interrupt would seem an injury to them. I nearly broke up with Hubby the first time he tried to engage me in conversation during the last 25 pages of Straight Man. I'll put a book aside and stare at the seat back in front of me during the last half hour of a flight if I think I might be forced to deplane with only 6 pages to go. And it goes without saying that I've stayed up way too late on way too many occasions soaking up the end of even mediocre novels.

But The Wire. Bubbles and Lester and Randy (oh, that smile). Not my friends, exactly, me being a clean-living white girl in a small, not terribly gritty city where I can indulge my deep desire to avoid seeing pain inflicted on anyone, especially an animal. I love these characters because I don't see a bit of myself in them -- unlike the characters in novels, to whom I grant voices, cadences, emotions that arise from something inside myself. I admire them because they are smarter than I am, speak more eloquently, live more vividly.

Mostly, though, I think it's possible I love them and their story because Hubby and I became acquainted with them as we became acquainted with each other.

Season Two of The Wire began just as we began living together. Neither of us had seen Season One, but that didn't matter any more than the fact that we hadn't even known each other when it was on and still didn't know much about each others' lives at the time. We didn't have the first clue what was going on for about half the season, but it was so good we watched anyhow. Not unlike our relationship.

By the start of Season Three we were newlyweds, with a history behind us to build upon. I had bought Hubby the DVD of Season One for Christmas, and we were now caught up on the story. It was both comfortable and thrilling -- returning to a plot we now sort of understood and continuing our own with the same uncertain sense that we didn't understand it as well as we hoped.

Season Four -- the really devastating one about the middle school kids -- rolled around in the middle of my pregnancy. Maybe I can blame the fact that for weeks after it ended I stumbled around the house moaning "Randy" on the hormones. I don't know what Hubby's excuse was.

And now the end has come. What does that mean for our marriage? I suppose it's a good thing that nothing was really resolved -- who expected it would be? -- and that life continues. Ours will too, even without those coveted Sunday nights watching really good tv (as opposed to old episodes of Reno 911 or even new ones of The Colbert Report).

And who knows? Maybe something just as good will come along one day. Or maybe we'll just be left with all the good things that happened to the tune of our Wire addiction -- our love for each other, our marriage, our child, and the beauty of being able to feel the loss of true art.

Spring Showers

2008-03-03T11:55:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I found myself eagerly looking forward to our neighbors' baby shower. This fact is notable for several reasons.

First of all, I was looking forward to a baby shower. Those who know me well probably noticed that something odd about this long before I did. Traditionally, I am not exactly to be found in the front lines of enthusiastic shower-goers.

My curmudgeonliness, I hasten to make clear, is not directed against the joy of childbearing. My antipathy toward showers goes all the way back to the first bridal shower I had the joy of not being able to attend. As I prepared to graduate from college, a dear friend from high school regaled me with stories about gifts of tacky lingerie, insipid guessing games designed to pry into a young couple's most intimate plans about how many children they wanted (none in her case), and lots of girlie squeals and blushing. (Actually, I added this last detail myself, as I wriggled out of ever viewing pictures of the event.) Even though I was her maid of honor, I was proud to have missed the bridal shower.

As bridal showers morphed into baby showers, I managed to work my vagabond life to my advantage. Move every two to four years, and you have a good shot at being on the wrong coast when a dear friend's friends send you the flower-adorned invitation in the pink envelope. "So sorry," I would grin into the phone as I RSVP'd. "I won't be able to make it."

The first baby shower I finally attended actually seemed promising enough. Two friends in St. Louis -- a cardiac surgeon and a physician's assistant -- adopted a son from Belarus. They asked that all gifts be made in the form of donations to the orphanage. No icky/cutsie clothing to trill over, professional women in attendance, and an honoree who was more likely to be spotted mowing the lawn with a hand mower than hanging little blue lambs in the nursery. It seemed a safe bet.

To this day, I have not figured out how putting a bunch of women with impressive graduate degrees into one room with quiche and piles of diapers could so fully transform them into something so deeply disturbing. Fruitlessly, I wandered from couch to chair to table in search of conversation that didn't revolve around the conversationalists' children. Not only did I have no children of my own at that point, but I didn't have much of a prospect for fathering them and was toying with the notion of using an anonymous donor once the university granted me tenure. I could easily imagine thumbing my single-and-artificially-inseminated nose at the Jesuits who employed me, but no part of me wanted to face the prospect of being reduced to the heated discussions surrounding me about whether a stop sign ought to be installed at the end of the block to make the street safe for play time.

As I made my get-away, I called my best and also-single friend. "I am never going to a baby shower again," I vowed.

And I meant it. Until I hosted one myself.

I'm not really sure why I decided I needed to host a shower for a friend who lived 1,500 miles away and was already being feted with two other showers, other than that she was very, very dear to me. Perhaps I also had some twisted notion that it made sense, since she and I had become pregnant within weeks of each other and I had soon thereafter miscarried. Surely, I must have thought somewhere in my hormone-addled brain, if I act like I'm okay I will be.

It is, I can now report with authority, hard to act okay when you have to dash out of the party and find a bathroom upstairs in which to sob without any real notion of what set you off. In fact, it's kind of embarrassing, having your grief come at you like a firehose when you're busy being happy for your friend.

So I stayed away from the showers until they were my own. Even then, I complicated the same friend's efforts to throw me a St. Louis shower by insisting there be "no games, no quiche, nothing pink or blue or too cute." She did her best, but I take full responsibility for initiating the traditional chorus of "oohhs!" that accompanies every tiny cute outfit. They are, I assure you, so much cuter when they are going on the being growing inside your own uterus.

Hubby and I had a shower in LA as well, our home at the time. I discovered that even men will say "oohh!" when presented with a cute baby outfit at a co-ed baby shower.

And now here I was, excited to be going to a baby shower. Convinced by my own experiences that baby showers needn't be icky? Perhaps. Transformed by motherhood into someone who no longer recognizes icky things? Only if the ickiness involves bodily fluids. So starved for a social life in my new home that anything will do? If so, Hubby and I had better get on those plans for a Vernal Equinox party.

No, I have to conclude, it has nothing to do with my growing tolerance for all things shower-related. I was just really, really happy for my neighbors and excited to spend time with them and their friends and, okay, ruined by my own pregnancy into really enjoying buying tiny little nightgowns and caps with a knit pea pod on top.

My happiness for my neighbors and for my invitation to their shower was also notable because not so long before I hadn't been sure about how happy I'd feel once they had their baby.

That sounds terrible. Let me explain.

In October, I had been looking forward to my own babies following theirs by a few months. By December, I found out those babies weren't happening. An ultrasound showed two empty egg sacs and one big explanation of why I hadn't been feeling nearly as sick as I had with The Boy. There would be no neighborhood baby showers for me.

I'm happy to say I didn't give those egg sacs a single thought at the shower (except maybe to tell myself one more time that come June I'll be mighty glad we aren't parents to newborn twins and a neglected 18-month-old). What I did think was how interesting and welcoming the women at the shower were, from the publicity director of the local Habitat for Humanity to the pediatric hospitalist whose eight-month-old goes to preschool with The Boy, to the hostess who lives one house to our south and the soon-to-be parents who live one house to the north.

Okay, we talked about our kids, but not obsessively. And I had The Boy with me as an instant, "Isn't he cute?" conversation-starter. But I am not and was not icky and there was nothing pink to be found because they didn't know the sex of the baby (although an errant ultrasonographer had more than suggested it might be a boy).

Seeing little Bodhi for the first time yesterday, I was struck not only by his beauty, but by the beauty of adulthood as well. His mother laughed about how strange it was to have "my children" in the car with her, and I knew exactly what she meant. With just The Boy, Hubby and I can take him out to restaurants and buy ourselves moments to read snippets of the Sunday Times by telling him to bring the basketball to the other parent. Once we have two -- or even the three that might be in our plan -- we will be real grown-ups, not some young couple with a baby. All the youth stuff will officially belong to the next generation.

And therein lies the beauty. I imagine watching The Boy playing with Bodhi and his siblings riding their bicycles down the block to play with the other kids living here. I feel a little bit too giddy at the notion of rereading the children's books my children read and refreshing my recollection of algebra by trying my hand at their homework assignments. It's as if the whole idea of youth is bigger than anything I can do or any way I can look. It's an energy that comes from the young but doesn't belong exclusively to them.

So maybe, just maybe, when they start having showers of their own, I'll be both old enough and young enough to feel as excited as I did about the neighbors' shower. And maybe I won't even mind a little tacky lingerie and a few pink bows.

Teacher Work Day

2008-02-12T06:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday The Boy's school closed at 1:00 for a "teacher work day" and I didn't cry about it.

My equanimity rather surprised me. After all, just a week before I had experienced a bit of a breakdown when they sent him home early with a teething temperature. Two weeks before that I wondered what exactly I was paying for when he spent 10 days at home with the virus that culminated in pneumonia. That bout was preceded by a snow day, our second, after the one just a week before that capped off winter break.

In other words, by all rights I needed a work day more than the teachers.

To further stack the deck against my sanity, on Sunday we had, as a family, used my ace-in-the-hole for days when I must entertain The Boy singlehandedly -- Health Adventure. Health Adventure is a sort of poor man's Museum of Science and Industry, the Oz of kids' museums with which I grew up. Some of my earliest memories involve the incubator where you could watch chicks hatching and the tongue rug surrounded by big, white, plastic teeth where one sat to watch movies about the importance of good dental hygiene. I made the mistake of returning when I was 18 and was deeply saddened to discover my favorite quaint exhibits overrun by computer games. So goes one's youth.

Health Adventure comes from more humble origins. Apparently it began as a way of entertaining kids in a hospital. It now shares space with the Asheville Museum of Art but in a couple of years will move to a grand new location, just as The Boy is old enough to appreciate the expansion.

Right now, what he appreciates the most is the Play Room. There's nothing particularly science or health related about the Play Room, unless you spend time discussing with your toddler the benefits of eating real versions of the plastic fruits and vegetables to be found strewn amongst the more popular baby dolls and xylophones. Or maybe the point is that exercise is good for you, and the Play Room is a place where smalls kids can run and climb and do what kids naturally do but adults somehow have to coax themselves into in the hopes of squeezing another couple of years out of their life expectancy.

This was Hubby's first trip to Health Adventure. He gamely sat in the rocking chair facing the tube The Boy likes to crawl through and waited patiently. The Boy, however, has decided the best way to use the tube is to crawl almost to Daddy and then turn around and shimmy himself back up to the platform where Mommy -- more accustomed to displacing small children on the equipment where The Boy needs a little help -- waits.

It was Hubby's idea to take The Boy down the tongue slide, something he's never done before. I think I enjoyed it more than The Boy, perhaps owing to latent happy memories of teeth brushing movies.

But Hubby's greatest idea was to venture out of the Play Room to the upstairs exhibits I had never seen, since I was convinced The Boy is too young to appreciate anything more sophisticated than the plastic washer/dryer he loves so much in the Play Room.

It turns out there's lots of room to crawl upstairs in Health Adventure as well. With wide, serious eyes The Boy checked out the six-year-old Dorothy running out of a private party, her hair in blue ribbons, her feet in sparkly red slippers. He gazed hopefully at the dizzy room until I asked Hubby to take him in. (My inner ears are partial to solid ground, thanks.) He dutifully studied the fish tank until he was sick of hearing Mommy say, "Fish. Fish. Fish."

About the only thing The Boy didn't like about Health Adventure was being forced to leave the pretty pink golf ball with the physics exhibit to which it belonged. I'm sure it wouldn't have been the first time the volunteers found a colored golf ball amongst the Leggos. But one has to begin setting boundaries some time.

We ran back to the car in a gale of wind that made The Boy cry and reminded me of why I had blown Health Adventure on a Sunday afternoon instead of a Teacher Work Day.

And yet. By the time 12:30 rolled around on Monday, I was ready to pick up The Boy. I needed to do a Target run, and he enjoys shopping. It was a little bit chilly for the park, but he was happily playing in front of his school, so I figured the park would be a good back up. We would, I felt certain, gracefully fly through the six hours until Daddy got home to help with his bath.

"Doh. Doh," The Boy crowed at me as I wrapped him in my arms.

"Tree," I explained as he pointed at one. "Tree." I glanced around to see if any of his caregivers was nearby to appreciate this example of good parenting.

"Tree," one of them joined in. A moment later another told me The Boy had taken two steps on his own that day. I left feeling happy and relaxed and like this motherhood thing isn't too tough. After all, how often do you get to sit with your baby in your lap on a Monday afternoon as he drinks a warm bottle of milk and the world stops for twenty minutes?

Hmm, a clue to my equanimity. Missed it?

The world STOPPED. Even though I had a full list of to-do's upstairs. This is very big news.

By the time I woke The Boy up from a two-hour-plus nap at 4:00, it wasn't feeling all that different from a normal Monday. A quick run to Target with the aid of cookies in the car, a struggle of wills over whether The Boy got to drink juice with dinner (I scored a hollow victory that left The Boy refusing to eat much of anything and me wondering if 13 months is really the age at which to train a child to appreciate plain water), and before I knew it Hubby was walking through the door and I hadn't even drawn the bath yet.

I'm still marveling at how effortlessly I accommodated a half-day of school. Could it be the acupuncture? Sure does help. The wonders of a few therapy sessions? My brain is feeling less scrambled these days.

Or maybe those aids merely helped me relax enough to discover the pleasure of a little boy on the verge of walking, talking, and otherwise bringing his mother all sorts of joyful moments.

Now that I'm slowing down enough to be in them.

Radio Shame

2008-02-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

At first, I was ashamed to admit it. I hid it on the 6th preset station, separated from NPR by at least three unprogrammed buttons, in a spot to which Hubby's finger seemed unlikely to wander. When I parked the car in front of our house, I carefully returned the radio to the NPR station, just in case someone other than me and The Boy might be in the car the next time I turned the key in the ignition. This being winter, I was saved the discomfort of keeping the windows firmly up and all sounds inside, shielded from the prying ears of neighboring cars.

And yet. I am no longer ashamed to admit it. I listen to a Top 40 radio station.

I could defend myself by pointing out that I was practically bullied into it. The Asheville radio choices are dismal -- at least to a sophisticated former city dweller such as myself, spoiled by the endless airwaves choices of Southern California. Morning Becomes Eclectic, bluegrass, alt-country, even good flamenco is available there if you know how to spot it.

Oh, come on. Who's kidding whom? If I'm fully disclosing, I might as well admit that in Los Angeles I alternated between presetting the radio to the second NPR station I knew I should be listening to and a cheesy player of 70's and 80's fare that I justified preferring when I was pregnant for reasons no longer readily apparent to me.

Still, the choices are far more limited in our new home. During those first long months before daycare shined a smiling face on us, I hoped for the comforts of NPR shows to entertain me as I entertained The Boy. To my chagrin, instead of gorging myself on episodes of The World, Day to Day, and The Business, I found myself feeding The Boy lunch to the strains of not particularly imaginative classical music. This lulling, tear-inducing fare began at 9 a.m., pretty much as soon as Hubby abandoned me for the "excitement" of the newsroom, and continued until 3:00, when I was generally wandering the streets with the stroller in search of stimulation and thus, sadly, oh so sadly, missing Fresh Air. Once The Boy was ready for dinner, All Things Considered had already ended and I had to listen to local talk shows about gardening or, um, nothing.

I did try to make up for this void by diligently downloading podcasts of my favorite shows. But -- and this might be a big, fat, sad clue to my affinity for Top 40 fare -- I didn't purchase an iPod until a few months ago. At this point, The Boy was in school and I was (supposedly) busy at work on my computer and no longer in desperate need of public radio. In my novice iPod fever, I downloaded exactly half of my CD selection to my computer (the other half seems to have mysteriously disappeared during the move, something about which I'm just sure Hubby knows not a thing). But playing the tinny sounding familiar songs while I worked proved too distracting.

As for my podcasts, they can be great company in the car. The only problem is, it never takes more than 10 minutes to get anywhere by car in Asheville. That's a lot of grocery trips to get in one full episode of Filmspotting. (And perhaps too many of The Loh Down on Science, which, I've found, is best sampled through the occasional, "Oh, it's The Loh Down on Science!" rather than in frenzied blocks designed to clear off the iPod for the next sync session.)

For a time, when driving I felt obligated to take advantage of our lingering XM subscription, a byproduct of Hubby's hound-accompanied cross-country drive. While I got an initial jolt of nostalgia from Fred's alt-tinged 80's fare, it quickly began to seem less like an enjoyable way to get from our house to the pediatrician's office and more like something I was trying to use up, like a series of yoga classes with a fast-approaching expiration date.

And so, the other day, I reached for the scan button, willing, just for the hell of it, to warble along to some bad country music or to join Dido in an rousing rendition of "Thank You" while recalling the old days in St. Louis, where such songs made me feel sadly defiant about living alone with my basset hound.

I can't say what song it was that made me stop. But as soon as I heard the ubiquitous "Star" moniker, I pressed firmly and decisively on the preset button. I knew I would return, so why resist?

Thereafter came the shame. Had I truly become one of those old people so uncool she doesn't even care how uncool she is? No longer can I pretend to be the young gal wearing an unwrinkled, coordinated outfit, prettified in make-up that is less than three years old, and sporting hair that she has actually bothered to style. That woman cruised along in her frequently clean Audi A4 unafraid to open the windows to the alternative station that maybe set her apart as being too old to appreciate -- or even listen to -- rap, but signaled that she was something more exotic than her faded, motherly, thirtysomething counterparts.

Now you can spot me on Merrimon Avenue in my Honda CRV (not a Highlander because when were child-car hunting and Hubby mentioned the Highlander, I cried real tears), my hair in a messy brown ponytail, some mascara my only admission that the "natural" look is something no one really looks good in, even though we pretend we think so. A child seat is the main decoration visible from the outside, but if you were to enter my auto realm you would be treated to a floor strewn with organic imitation Cheerios, a blue polka-dotted grocery cart seat cover, and a few very old bottles of sun block that used to occupy The Boy while strapped in for a ride.

So, really, how much could a little Top 40 hurt my image?

It was Tuesday when I embraced my Top 40 proclivities, and not in capitulation to life as a deeply unhip over-the-hill mother. No, on that lovely, 70-degrees-and-sunny day that felt like spring and Long Beach, I decided my dirty little secret isn't so dirty after all.

I started the day feeling pretty down. The day before I felt I had begun to hit my stride after our orgy of out-patient surgery and viral pneumonia and snow days. I was just finishing up a legal project, clearing the way to a week of time to write, write write. In my mind I would post a fabulous story on my blog, muscle my way into a weekly column at the Citizen Times, finish my book proposal, rouse at least fifty more reviewers for my Amazon.com contest excerpt, and maybe even have time to delve back into my yoga teacher sleuth novel.

My high hopes blew up with a resigned little gasp when The Boy's school called at 3:00. "He's got a fever of 100.5, and he had a loose bowel movement," they informed me solemnly. "You need to come pick him up."

Ha, I thought to myself as I sweetly promised to be right there. This was nothing more than the result of indulgently letting The Boy eat as much venison sausage as he wanted at the Super Bowl party the night before. He would be fine while I at least finished my paying work.

One impatient phone call informing me that his temperature had climbed to 101.1 later, I finally showed up to collect him. Rather belligerently, I noted that, "This means he can't come tomorrow either, doesn't it?"

"Twenty-four hours fever free without medication," one of the caregivers told me in that annoying way some people have of telling you the rule you already knew without offering you some hope that there is a way to interpret it that might allow you to bring your child to daycare the next day.

And so I found myself Tuesday morning with another day devoted to my child.

This is not, I hasten to explain, a bad thing in theory. I love my child, and I love spending time with him, even if I do like to do it in a room with a clock and, for a mere 45 minutes a day (which can't have long term negative effects, right?), a television set. But I've been working for months to figure out what I want to do with my life outside of mothering, and I am, frankly, more than ready to get on with it. A snow day here, an illness there -- I can convince myself that these are opportunities to slow down and enjoy The Boy before he grows up. But at some point it's only fair that I get my chance.

Apparently, Tuesday was not the day when that chance would come. Instead, I made the best of it and resolved to do the things that needed doing but couldn't get done while I was at my desk writing.

Next thing The Boy knew, he was in the car on his way to Amazing Savings. And, yes, the Top 40 radio station was playing.

Freed from the house, basking in the sunshine like a basset hound flopped belly-up on the back porch, enjoying my new coral-and-brown New Balance shoes that the teacher at Jack's school with a degree from the Fashion Institute proclaimed "great," I started feeling almost as great as my shoes. And the song about the woman whose kids make fun of her because she's still stuck in the 80's didn't make a dent in my mood.

We parked at the Amazing Savings closer to town -- the one I hadn't been to because everyone told me it was smaller and dirtier than the one a 20-minute drive away. But it was a day for adventure. If I could brave the derision of those who knew I dared listen to a Top 40 station, then I could brave the derided local Amazing Savings.

Making our way past the loading dock and through the doors of the windowless warehouse, The Boy and I stepped into something that felt familiar, in a hip, Californian way. The crowded aisles, the nonsuburban shoppers -- there was something faintly Trader Joe's-esque about this place. The rival Amazing Savings's fluorescent lighting, scarred floors, and dirty-ish shelves had scared me off their produce; the ghost of the supermarket the space had once been haunted the zucchini, making them seem older than they were, and introduced the suggestion of mold on the garlic. In this market-like space, however, the organic red peppers glowed, and, at $3.99 a pound, made me weep with joy. (If you are reading this from California, please stop laughing and have some pity for me, living in a place where organic red peppers regularly sell for -- I kid you not -- $7.99 a pound and thus have been absent from my diet since we moved here.)

But here's the thing that made me happiest. As The Boy and I cruised the aisles looking for all natural deals, I found myself humming along to Michelle Branch. And Peter Gabriel. And old Foo Fighters. Music I had just been listening to in my car.

It really doesn't matter to me that I had a baby in my shopping cart or that most of the people in the store were at least as old as I am or even that I was grocery shopping for goodness sakes, not checking out some funky So Ho boutique. I felt young and lighthearted and cool enough to be buying discount organic food in a warehouse on the outskirts of a kind of funky, kind of artsy, progressive, and, yes, hip city. Even though slightly outdated Top 40 was playing over the loudspeakers and would soon be playing in my car as we drove home. Or maybe because of it.

Besides, how can I resist a radio station where I get to hear songs with lyrics likening your love to a tattoo because, "I will always have it with me"? With such treats awaiting me, I'm happy to admit that I'd rather have a good laugh and a tune I can sing with than something the critics tell me it's okay to like.

Winter Break

2008-01-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

One of the (many) things that displeases me about winter is how, right about the end of January, it starts to dawn on me that I no longer have any friends.

We moved to Asheville in sunshine and warm evenings and forged solid friendships with our neighbors on the sidewalk in front of our house. Talk of grilling in the yard floated in the air, but we didn't really need to eat together to create camaraderie. Here it was, right outside our front door, absent any reason to expend undue effort.

But now it's winter, and all I spot outside our front door are the fleeting forms of bundled-up dog owners racing through the arctic air with their pooches and, twice now, our neighbor's chickens fruitlessly scratching at the hard, grassless dirt of the front yards up and down the block.

It's not like we spent our warm California winters buddying up to our neighbors, but at least we had the option. To be honest, we were kind of surprised when Eric and Fernando, our Long Beach neighbors to the north, invited us to the party celebrating the completion of construction on their new, mustard-colored house. Hubby had engaged in a vigorous trash can dispute with them when we first moved in, consisting of silently pushing our shared can in front of their gate when they left it blocking ours and finding it back in front of ours the following morning. He finally locked it up securely inside our yard like a forbidden totem, desperately wished for, temptingly close, but denied. They acquired their own can from the city and thereafter we gave each other friendly waves and not much else in the way of social offering.

The warm Long Beach weather actually cut against any possibility of friendship with our neighbors in the apartment building to the south. Mild, beach-tinged nights allowed Apartment 4 to host frat-like parties that spilled out into the hallway on the other side of our wall throughout the year. The woman in Apartment 2 liked to have passionate 2:30 a.m. cell phone conversations under our bedroom window even in the dead of winter despite Hubby's repeated admonishments to "MOVE IT INSIDE!" I did become friendly with a young mother from the building whom I occasionally spotted as I sat in front of our house in the desperate days when The Boy was old enough to want entertainment but too young to provide it for himself and I was desperate to talk to someone -- anyone -- who could speak my adult language. But she lived on the far side of the building from us, and we weren't quite friendly enough to displace my certainty that every person making their way up or down the front steps was the evil sleep stealer driving us away from snow-less, ice-less climes.

So, too, I'm aware that one can get too much of a good neighbor and perhaps prefer a few months away from the glare of their scrutiny. A sort of detante period to keep relations friendly.

We had no such declared retreat in West Hollywood, where bare-chested Barry (if the thermometer dipped below 65 he covered up with a slumped bathrobe) passed out bon mots about the residents like free samples of Boca Burgers to the shoppers in Wild Oats. There was something truly comforting about having all the neighbors gather sympathetically around our home after the police apprehended the man who had climbed through our living room window at five in the morning by yelling, "Get down! Get down!" and cuffing him on our front lawn as he emerged from the vacant unit next door showered and wearing clothes he had stolen some days earlier from the next house down the block. But I used to grow anxious walking leisurely Roxanne home from the park for fear of being swooped down upon by the lonely guy who lay in wait for people to regale with stories of his wealth and business acumen.

One of the early joys of finding ourselves in Asheville was the neighborhood and, more specifically, the neighbors. We were reminded of how many potential friendships lay within a one-block radius at a Christmas Eve party from which we emerged certain we would be throwing dinner parties every weekend of 2008 and forging life-long friendships, the kind where your kids play with their kids so you don't end up the loser parents who still haven't found a sitter they'd leave their boy with five months after moving to their new home.

There have been, I need not say, no dinner parties.

Which is why I was so grateful for yesterday's brilliance of sun and temperatures in the fifties. This description aptly fits the California winter days of my childhood when we used to bundle ourselves in our down ski parkas, walk the dogs a couple of blocks, and hurry home to drink hot chocolate in front the fire my father had waiting for us. But now that I am a winter-hardy gal, I welcome fifty degrees as an invitation to take The Boy to the park, where other families are enjoying the break in winter.

Usually, my social interaction with other parents at the park consists of directing small smiles in their direction designed to convey the sense that I am not averse to conversation but don't presume to be one of the established members of their social circle. Generally, my smiles seem to have been received in this unfortunate manner, and I find myself talking only to The Boy. Such conversation consists of sparkling phrases like, "Don't put sand in your mouth," and "Yes, that's a dog!"

But yesterday brought a new revelation: Almost Walking. The Boy, so shy when traversing the playground safe in Mommy's arms, gamely tried some walking-while-holding-Mommy's-fingers-for-balance. He discovered this practice has multiple benefits. First, it allows one to make one's way, repeatedly, with no end in sight, back to the steps of the jungle gym where, after a little boost, one can crawl with the speed of a greyhound puppy to the top of the slide and force Mommy to push small children out of the way before one tries to go down head first without her. Second, after an exhilarating slide down the slide in Mommy's lap -- angled awkwardly to create enough clearance for us to pick up some speed -- one lands on one's feet, one's lungs unconstricted and thus primed to give a particularly hearty cry of excitement. One can also lead Mommy with hands clutched around her fingers in full exploration of the underside of the jungle gym because she has to bend over painfully to hold one's hands anyhow, and so needn't worry about head clearance.

Best of all, once The Boy was semi-independently ambulatory, he found himself in the midst of other kids. Kids who talked to him and then asked me why he didn't seem to understand what they were saying. "He's 13 months old," didn't satisfactorily answer the question for them, it seemed, but it helped me save face with the nearby parents who, based on The Boy's height, might have taken him for a two-year-old lagging sadly behind in his development.

While The Boy couldn't talk to the other kids, he could yell at them, often without their notice, but with great brio nonetheless. And when he yelled, touched, crawled past the other kids, it often prompted their parents to speak to me. Or me to speak to their parents, frequently in terms of apology -- on The Boy's behalf for crawling right through the line for the slide and on my own behalf for sliding down without first checking to make sure the 22-month-old had who went before us had cleared out from the bottom. Embarrassing, yes, especially when the child's mother calls to him in a panic to move out of the way. But it has been a long time since I had to observe slide etiquette.

I'm not saying that I walked home with my pockets full of new friends' phone numbers, or even that our conversations made it past "How old is s/he?" But for the first time I felt like I was part of the playground community. No longer must I huddle in desperate, dead-ended conversation with the other pariah-parents relegated to the sandbox. Somehow, on this sunny day warm enough for me to lumber up and down the slide in nothing more than a sweater and jeans, I discovered a place where people interact and belong and really live -- outside the cocoon of their heated homes -- in the winter.

With breaks like this, maybe I'll even find myself hosting a dinner party before the summer solstice.

We Make the Most of Our Health Insurance

2008-01-24T09:04:00.000-08:00

In the past 8 days, The Boy and I have been to doctors' offices 9 times. The Boy has had his temperature taken at least 14 times. I have been stuck with needles 8 times, and The Boy twice. Between the two of us, we have ingested 10 different medicinal substances.

And I'm not ready to call things normal.

It all began 11 days ago, when I found out that I would have to undergo out-patient surgery.

It's not that I'm squeamish. I've chatted away with phlebotomists filling vial after vial of my blood, discussed my work while doctors do what they do with speculums. I'm the one who never says it hurts when a physician pushing her hands into some tender part of my anatomy asks if it hurts.

It's just that the past several times I've casually trusted someone to perform a medical procedure on my body, I've come out of it feeling . . . invaded. And the surgery I was told I had to have feels particularly invasive. As if anything that involves strangers putting metal implements into your body isn't particularly invasive.

I had been avoiding the surgery for six weeks and felt more than a little bit defeated that I had run out of options. Acupuncture sure made me feel less gloomy, but it wasn't resolving the problem. I'm grateful I found my way back to regular yoga classes, but they didn't regularize my body. And, frankly, I was sure I had only a limited amount of time remaining before Hubby threw up his hands and told me to move back to California to feel sorry for myself.

So we scheduled the surgery for the following Tuesday, and I continued my week a marked woman.

Two days later, a Wednesday, I received the welcome distraction of a call from The Boy's school. "His temperature is fine, but he's kind of weepy and wants his Mommy," they told me.

What could be better than a child who just wants to be held by his Mommy, who, conveniently enough, really wanted to hold her boy?

I took him home and we played cheerfully and I pretended I didn't feel like I was walking around under a big, black, scheduled-surgery cloud. We had a little dinner, which, these days, consists of The Boy sticking his fingers into whatever dish I'm holding and eating his refried beans/yogurt/other viscous substance by hand. We both enjoy it greatly.

After his dinner, we stopped in the kitchen to feed the dogs their kibble and Mommy a few corn chips.

As I expertly held The Boy with one arm and reached for the chips with the other, The Boy's eyes bugged and his body jerked. About a gallon of vomit cascaded over the chip bag and onto the kitchen floor.

When you have been a mother for 13 months -- 6 of which involved a child with reflux so bad he seemed to spit up twice the amount of milk you had just poured down him at every single meal -- a little bit of vomit doesn't panic you. Even a lot of vomit.

In fact, a few months ago, I watched all of Superbad covered in The Boy's vomit. It was only the second time we'd been out to see a movie since his birth, and I really, really wanted to see it. It probably helped that the theater was dark enough that I didn't see just how much vomit I was sitting in until the lights came up and I had marginally dried out. Hubby claims he missed the vomit entirely and got to watch the movie blissfully unaware of just how groce his wife has become.

Now, as The Boy vomited his way down the hall to the bathroom, I calmly stripped off my chunked cashmere sweater and filled the bathtub. My excuse was to wash him off, but honestly The Boy loves his bath, and, sure enough, it seemed to fix everything.

The next day was what we in Asheville like to call a "snow day" -- about an inch of white stuff on the ground and temperatures reaching the low 40's, so it's pretty much all gone by noon but everything closes down anyhow so no one has to risk driving mountain roads in "weather."

In this case, the "weather" meant the cancellation of the "pre-op" appointment I didn't want to have. Hmm. Maybe there is something to this winter weather.

Furthermore, much as I look at every school closing as a personal affront to my efforts to locate something called a life in the mess of my days doing nothing of permanence, I had to admit it was just as well The Boy's school closed as well or we might have caused an epidemic. Not that I knew anything much was wrong until the afternoon, when I took the first of The Boy's temperature readings and discovered that he would have been sent home from school if he had been there.

Out came the trusty Tylenol. I remember vaguely the days when Hubby and I resisted putting any sort of evil drug into The Boy's perfect system and how I would cry every time I gave in and dosed him at 2:30 in the morning to ease his teething pain. By now, however, we recognize Tylenol for what it is -- our drug of choice to make our boy smile again. I should be embarrassed to admit that when he catches sight of the bottle he reaches for it with great urgency, begging for a squirt of its cherry-flavored goodness.

This time, however, Tylenol let us down. I held him in bed, rather relishing the chance to just read a book and let everything else go to hell. Until I took his temperature again. It had climbed to 103.8. Definitely high enough to justify a call to the on-call pediatrician.

"Try Motrin," she suggested.

Out went Hubby to CVS and back he came armed with substantial bottles of both berry-flavored Motrin and some back-up Tylenol. The Boy and I cuddled up for a night together, banished Hubby to the daybed in the office, and, with him well dosed, we had a peaceful night.

Until Friday morning hit me and I realized that -- much as I would have liked to let the pre-op appointment slip away unnoticed by all but myself -- I had to be responsible and reschedule it.

Which is why I found myself at 1:15 sitting in the waiting room of the satellite office. The last time I had been here, the receptionist had kept me waiting 45 minutes past my appointment time, blandly assuring me that I was signed in and everyone knew I was waiting . Until I huffed out and told her to cancel my appointment because I had a child to pick up from daycare. Only then did she mention that she was waiting for my records to be faxed over from the other office and thus had not even put me in the queue.

This time, I had Hubby sitting next to me missing work and holding a baby who, it was becoming increasingly clear, was not just tired from being rudely pulled away from his nap, but who was feeling really lousy. I sat in my seat brooding and fighting the urge to walk away from not only the pre-op appointment but the op as well.

Forty-five minutes later The Boy was feeling even lousier and the receptionist was blandly assuring me "they haven't forgotten you."

Fifty minutes later, Hubby sprang into action.

There's nothing like watching an angry man clutching a sick baby telling off the receptionist for rolling her eyes at him. "I want to talk to someone who can tell us what's going on," he stormed.

Wouldn't you know it, within minutes we were ushered into a private waiting room by a nurse plainly trained in sweetly handling irate patients. She explained that the doctor had arrived late from the hospital and wouldn't have time to see us for 45 more minutes.

Now, I don't know what kind of world the receptionist lives in, but I tend to think it's only polite to inform someone that she won't be seen until TWO HOURS after her appointment time, oh, when she checks in. "They haven't forgotten you" is just not an adequate substitute.

Happily, the nurse gave us the option of seeing a different doctor, as the one we were scheduled to see wasn't the one scheduled to do the surgery anyhow. Since, remember, my appointment was supposed to be the day before at a different office. Damn winter.

The doctor who did see us was perfectly nice, but what she did just didn't seem like something a doctor was needed for. Or an office visit, for that matter. All she did was ask me some questions that we in the law business like to call CYA. Because lawyers are both painfully unhip and overconfident of their own importance, I'm willing to bet that it doesn't take a law degree to know that CYA means Cover Your Ass and that the waste of three hours of my day was nothing more than a requirement of the insurance companies. Maybe they imagined that if allowed to, say, answer a few questions over the phone, I would lie about not smoking and they therefore needed me within sniffing distance of the person doing the asking. And maybe -- I don't know, I don't have medical training -- but maybe doctors are better able to smell the lingering odor of tobacco on a lying surgery-patient's clothing than, say, a nurse who wouldn't have arrived late from the hospital and hence have a backlog of patients. We live in North Carolina, where people smoke, so this is entirely possible.

At any rate, by the time I got The Boy home his eyes were glazed, his mouth hung down in the corners like an upside-down slice of mandarin orange, and he had a cough that hurt to hear. His temperature 20 minutes after a dose of our savior the Motrin was 104.

This merited a call to the doctor's office. Which, of course, was closing. The doctor told me to bring him in to the Saturday sick clinic in the morning and go to the hospital if anything at all changed in the middle of the night.

These are words that can make a mother already freaked out and frustrated about impending invasive surgery cry.

"I think he has pneumonia," I sobbed to Hubby. "And we're going to have to go to the emergency room."

"I think he's just fine," Hubby said in that way of his that treads the line between soothing and dismissive. He might have even smirked just a little bit at the doctor's the next morning when their thermometer suggested that That Boy was, in fact, Just Fine. (Okay, that was for effect. Hubby would never smirk at me in a doctor's office with our sick boy. In fact, he is not a smirker at all. But, in these circumstances, he could have been.)

Ah, but there is a reason we see doctors instead of merely thermometers. Doctors can do things like look into ears and announce that The Boy has a nasty ear infection. They can validate mothers by saying that The Boy's cough does sound bad, even if they can hear nothing in his lungs. And they can prescribe cherry-flavored antibiotics with just the right amount of apologia for giving him antibiotics to make you feel like a good parent who wouldn't resort to antibiotics if it weren't really, really necessary.

And so we spent a weekend fever-free. The Boy continued to sleep with me, and Hubby continued to sleep on the daybed in the office. In all honesty, he probably preferred it that way, as I spent much of my time shuffling through the house moaning about not wanting surgery. It gets to be a drag after a while, I know.

By Monday morning, we were discussing why we should still take our on-the-mend boy to the doctor because, even though the antibiotics seemed to be working, that cough was worrisome.

"Remember she said it sounded like pneumonia," I said as I wiped The Boy's bare bottom and grabbed a clean diaper. He laughed and wiggled his legs.

"What's that?" Hubby demanded. By "that" he meant a sugar-coating of red spots all over The Boy's chest and back.

As is apparent by now, we are not fans of medical intervention. So, naturally, we blamed the antibiotics.

Off we went to the doctor's office. She examined him, growing more speckled by the minute. She quizzed me on what medications we'd given him -- none since a bedtime dose of Motrin the night before. She listened to his lungs. She spoke to him instead of me, perhaps to remind me that I was holding my baby and not to do anything sudden or violent.

"You're going to have to get a chest x-ray, buddy," she said.

There are any number of good reasons the radiology technicians might prefer to have the father stand in the room wearing a metal apron and holding the baby's arms over his head as he is fitted into a plastic sheath and made to sit still and scream while his chest is x-rayed. It could be because fathers tend to be taller. Or stronger. They are definitely, one hundred percent certainly not pregnant. And -- and I think this is the deciding factor -- they are less likely to grab their screaming baby and flee from the room.

Back we went to the pediatrician's office. It was a long wait, but at least Hubby and I could take turns watching the DVD of Spiderman playing on the flat screen t.v. Until he had to go back to work and I got to hear the news that, yes, The Boy had viral pneumonia, and a bad case of it at that. He got two shots of antibiotics -- my friend at this point, I will never deride them again -- and nestled blearily into my lap while we waited half an hour longer to make sure he didn't have an adverse reaction to the antibiotics -- in which case I wouldn't have such good things to say about modern medicine.

When we settled back in the waiting room I was disappointed to discover that Spiderman had started over again, subjecting me to exactly the same scenes I had already watched. Finally, a mother complained that her three-year-old girl might be, say, frightened by such fare in the doctor's office, and they put in The Incredibles instead.

When I got home and crawled into bed with The Boy, Hubby suggested that at least this day had taken my mind off the surgery scheduled for the morrow.

"No," I assured him. "It just made me more miserable."

How miserable? Consider the odds that your child will be diagnosed with pneumonia the day before you are scheduled for surgery you would cut off your right arm to avoid. Add to this the unlikelihood that the appointment time the pediatrician has available to check on his progress is the very hour you are under edict to appear at the hospital for surgery prep. Make it even more special -- the day of The Boy's diagnosis, the day before your scheduled surgery, is Martin Luther King Day and your doctor's office is closed so you can't call the surgery scheduler and re-schedule.

It was touch and go Tuesday morning whether Hubby would successfully talk me into going through with the surgery. It must have been the combination of the surgery scheduler still not picking up her phone and The Boy's rash fading that found me entering out-patient admissions alone.

I mumbled to everyone I saw that my husband would be coming and must be allowed to come find me. They promised he would as they stripped my clothes, made me sit on a gurney, and tried four times to get an IV going without "blowing a vein." In case you were wondering, it is not fun to be fitted with an IV four times while your veins blow. Especially when you are grudgingly willing to even sit in the room, waiting for your husband to call to tell you the baby is fine and envisioning how you will rip the painfully inserted IV out of your arm and walk to the pediatrician's office if you find out that he is, say, having another chest x-ray.

Finally, Hubby called as I stubbornly sat up on the gurney, refusing to be a lazy body remaining inert for convenience's sake.

"He's doing much better," he assured me. "She's going to give him a breathing treatment to open up his lungs. I'm going to be here another half an hour."

"You probably won't make it here before my surgery," someone mumbled in a deep, toneless, I'm-not-really-here-but-sitting-on-a-beach-in-Hawaii voice.

"Probably not," Hubby admitted. "I love you."

I cried. Until the orderly came to transport me to the pre-op room in a wheelchair and I bitched at her about hating being wheeled around in a wheelchair because it makes me feel less human. She was kind of confused by me and unfortunately had no choice but to make my transport even more humiliating by loading me down with the white plastic shopping bags of my belongings that, by all rights, Hubby should have been holding.

It's only fair to say that everyone was really nice to me. In the case of the pre-op nurse, maybe a little too nice, as I promised her I didn't care whether the plastic glasses case we used was blue or purple. "Oh, the blue matches your eyes," she simpered. I wondered it she had ever had any luck at all making a single grown person about to undergo surgery smile.

Security came and took my things, the doctor had an honest and respectful talk with me, the anesthesiology nurse offered me something for my nerves which I heartily refused, and pretty soon after that it was over.

Plainly those drugs they gave me were good, because I woke up apologizing for my rotten mood and even smiled at the nurse in the recovery room.

It wasn't until a couple hours after I'd been home, when I'd lulled Hubby into thinking it was all over and my insanity had subsided and I was competent to take care of my child that the drugs wore off. "I'm depressed," I announced and dragged myself into the office to sleep on the daybed.

The Boy and I are both on the mend -- his cough subsides as my depression does. But the flurries outside my window don't bode well for our futures. Hubby must agree, as he recently purchased a light machine designed to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Personally, I think living somewhere where winter doesn't exist would be a better solution. But since everything else about Asheville is pretty okay, I'm willing to give the SAD machine a try.

The Year of the Normal

2008-01-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

On our first day back to school after the holidays, Hubby's birthday, an in-law visit, and an inch of snow that shut down all of Asheville (a very good sign, I told myself, that such weather is not the norm, disproven, alas, by the blanket of snow outside my window right now), one of The Boy's teachers said to me, "I'm ready for normal."

Amen.

There was a time, not so long ago, that my desire for the normal would have alarmed me greatly. Life as the single mother of a velvet-eared basset hound was about motion. My calendars were adorned with notations in different colored pens to give me something to which I could count down. "Okay, it's Monday today, but tomorrow I teach a yoga class at 5:45, and Wednesday is trash day, and Thursday I'll watch Tivo, and Friday is Friday and I've made it through another week." Hair appointments, therapy appointments, acupuncture appointments, an appointment with an astrologer (just one, and it was pretty cool), lunches with colleagues, and even a date or two made my life run.

Even worse, I pulled out one of my old journals from the mid-90's the other day and found myself gasping for breath as if on a very long and very frenzied run. From the gym to the law firm (black leather book bag crammed full of gym clothes, shampoo, and, yes, hair dryer because the ones in the locker rooms at the gym made my hair frizzy and doll-like) to drinks after work or a meeting for my volunteer work at the National Zoo or a movie or . . . No wonder I experienced panic attacks if I awakened on a Sunday with nothing to do. (The cure, if you should ever suffer the same illness: run 10 miles with a section of the New York Times in your pocket to read on the subway home.)

In those days, normal was bad. Normal was safe. Normal was slow. Normal was . . . normal.

Now my panic attacks are brought on by the fact that I want life to be normal. I want to be the mom riding the slide with my boy on a Saturday afternoon. I want to be the person who eats dinner watching a half hour at a time of The Return of the Jedi or Chinatown (we aren't too picky as long as we can Tivo it for free) before washing the dishes and getting ready for bed at 9:00. I wish I knew that I would be sitting down to the same desk, the same work every day.

What could bring on such a misplaced desire to be boring?

Maybe it's moving into a house on which I actually put a 30-year mortgage. Although I owned a lovely house in St. Louis, I went for the better rate on the 7-year balloon because I just couldn't fathom living in the same place for more than seven years. (I made it a whopping four, a record for me.)

Maybe it's having a husband who's my best friend. Although in the past my best friends and I did more than look forward to watching new episodes of The Wire and driving to sleepy little towns for lunch on the weekends.

Many would say it's a Welcome to Motherhood moment. But I vowed to be a Hip Mama when I was trying to get pregnant (see "At 39, I Want the Baby Without the Blame," Newsweek, 10/10/05; don't see a google search I did on myself to see if I could include a link to a copy of the article because I found some weird comments about it out there and now it's bugging me).

I think the reason I want 2008 to be the Year of the Normal is because I can't remember the last time life was.

Certainly there's been no normal since our move to Asheville. There was that month trying to find child care for The Boy so I could get back to my work. Those few weeks with the sitter who didn't seem to do much with him except take him to Wendy's and didn't free up too much of my time because whenever I walked through the room I had to hold him until he stopped crying. And those endless weeks when his adjustment to school was delayed by: a cold; an ear infection; the antibiotics he took to kick the ear infection; a visit by my parents when he was just getting over the ear infection; a visit to his aunt and uncle's house in West Virgina followed by a visit here by his grandmother by which time he felt he should rightly be the center of all attention and not have to share toys with a bunch of other kids; and the stomach bug.

And then . . . he started liking school. I started working at my desk instead of staring at the school's phone number posted right over my computer and wondering how often I could call to check up on him and whether I'd get the bills paid before they called and told me he'd been crying for 45 minutes straight and would really like to go home now.

In fact, by early December there were even a few days he didn't cry when I left him in the mornings. When he, dare I say it, looked forward to school. I started yoga again. I found time to write.

Until the holidays came. Before I knew it, life was all about being a mother instead of a writer. Imagine the time spent shopping when you have not only a boy's first Christmas gifts, but his first birthday gifts as well. But, wait, there's more -- how about planning Hubby's Christmas gift and making it a surprise party with his out-of-town family members? There just isn't time for normal.

By the time January 2 rolled around and brought with it the start of The Boy's school again I was dead set on normal.

Which is plainly why January 2 was a snow day.

They tell me things shut down here at the merest whisper of snow because of the mountain roads, but I'm pretty sure it's just because everyone else needs a break from normal and no one cares that I am still trying to find my way back to it.

So it's now January 20 and I'm sitting in my office with the sheer brown curtains I bought in September and just put up this morning and I still have holiday cards to send out (unapologetically, I've decided) and I'm figuring that even 20 days in, 2008 has a chance of being The Year of the Normal.

Of course, not this week, because I have too much to do.

We Interrupt Our Regular Programming

2008-01-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

Chances are if you read this blog this is old news to you.

But as I am now groveling for votes in an American Idol-style new novel competition, I'll risk repeating myself in the hopes of catching some lovely person who has stumbled onto my blog or one of you equally lovely friends (or friends of friends) whose email account spit my email into spam because the "To" line includes my entire address book.

My novel, Long Beach Baby, cruelly still unpublished, has been selected as a semi-finalist in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel contest. And you can read a whole 5,000 words of it by going to http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00121WEUK/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top and clicking on the Download (for free!) button in the upper right corner of your screen.

More importantly -- and here comes the pandering -- you can write a comment or review and help me catch the attention of the folks at Penguin Books who are deciding which excerpts they will review and consider for a spot as finalist.

May I repeat this in grossly clear terms? PLEASE WRITE SOMETHING (hopefully nice) ABOUT MY EXCERPT (and maybe, while you're at it, say how the not-so-great-reviews are written by crazy people who wouldn't know a good novel if they actually sat down and read one) SO I CAN ADVANCE TO THE NEXT ROUND.

Plus, it might make up for the fact that I have posted NOTHING on this blog for the entirety of 2008.

Of that, a posting very, very soon, I promise. Just know that I am spending all my baby-free and sleep-free time right now tracking down every last person who was ever nice to me and begging them to review my piece.

In the meantime, enjoy, I hope . . .

Christmas in Asheville

2007-12-31T07:55:00.000-08:00

It wouldn't be Christmas in Asheville, it seems, if we didn't find ourselves herding chickens.

The same chickens, in fact, who had survived Audrey's hunting expedition in September. It was, without a doubt, our duty to see them safely home, both as a matter of holiday good will and because we still feel kind of guilty about the whole Audrey-catches-a-chicken thing.

Fittingly enough, Christmas kicked off with an invitation from the chickens' owner.

It was the 22nd, a Saturday, and she really issued the invitation to our housekeeper. I saw the two of them chatting in front of the house and thought it was nice that a Spanish-speaking neighbor would take the time to chat with our shy, non-English-speaking housekeeper.

Then she turned to me and Hubby. Her tenant, she explained, missed his home in Mexico and was anxious to meet some neighbors. Now. At this moment on a darkening Saturday afternoon before Christmas.

She was quite insistent.

I explained that I had to take our housekeeper home, and the chicken-neighbor assured me our housekeeper had already accepted her invitation. It kind of surprised me to hear this, but I thought maybe our housekeeper knew the chicken-neighbor. And it wasn't like I had anywhere I absolutely had to be.

So off we trooped, Hubby with The Boy in front, our housekeeper walking uncertainly behind them, and me taking up the rear, so as to be respectful of the housekeeper, who seemed as unclear about what we were heading into as we were.

A man we took to be the tenant from Mexico stood on the front porch with another man, smoking cigarettes and speaking in hushed, relaxed voices. They stopped talking and watched with mild interest as we straggled through the front gate.

Hubby turned to me. "Are we sure this is the right house?" he asked.

My response was not as positive as it might have been.

The man we took to be the tenant from Mexico finally asked if we were friends of the chicken-neighbor. He seemed quite unaware of his anxiety to meet some neighbors.

We made our way inside to find a polite but lost-looking college student seated at a table set with ham and a small cooked chicken. Awkwardness ensued.

I looked out the propped open back door onto the screened porch and admired the chickens peeking inside at me.

I asked if the cooked chicken on the table had once resided in the yard. Our chicken-neighbor assured me it had not.

Hubby and the housekeeper ate some of the store-bought chicken and some ham and some pecan pie.

At some point, our housekeeper gave me the nod, and we wished everyone a happy holiday and set out to continue ours. In the car on the way to her house I asked if she knew the chicken-neighbor. She told me she didn't. I told her I didn't really either and felt released from any responsibility.

Hubby and I failed to return the chicken-neighbor's invitation the next day when other neighbors came by to share The Boy's first birthday cake. No doubt it would have been the neighborly thing for us to do, but I think we were both still a little bit shaken by the awkwardness.

And, really, chickens were the last thing on our mind as we watched The Boy open the first of his gifts on Christmas eve. My mind, in fact, was taken up with a horrifying realization. Both of the gifts we gave him to open were from his aunts -- a tradition Hubby wanted to carry on from his childhood. And both of the presents required assembly.

This fact alone is not a cause for terror. We'd have plenty of time to put them together on Christmas Day, after all.

This year.

But in a flash I saw The Boy at two years old, when he would not calmly examine the box with the toy that required assembly and look at us with a perfectly happy four-and-a-half tooth smile and drool on his chin. Instead, he would scream as Hubby and I, hands shaking from the pressure, struggled to understand the instructional pictures that have now replaced any attempts to explain in clear English how to assemble a toy but have failed to make it any easier. Plainly, Hubby and I agreed, we would have to budget pre-Christmas time for gift assembly in the future.

And therein lay the horror. Exhausted from the effort of buying and wrapping gifts for an expanding family and a child with the bad luck to be born on December 23, I tried to imagine how -- where on earth -- I will find the time next year to also assemble gifts. Of course, I knew. Gone will be Mommy's time for sleep. Which should make for an especially pleasurable holiday season.

This year, however, was proving most pleasant. It was Christmas afternoon, The Boy was upstairs snoozing away the overwhelming fact of three straight days of gifts, and Hubby and I were enjoying the quiet of a house with a sleeping baby.

Then Audrey broke the silence with a strangled cry of excitement and frustration. Across the street, the chickens were taking a stroll down the block.

Our first instinct was to take pictures.

After a few minutes I asked Hubby if it wouldn't be the neighborly thing to put them back in their yard.

"Can you herd chickens?" he asked, quite reasonably.

I recalled how our next door neighbor had rounded the corner of our house with the chicken Audrey caught wrapped gently in her tee-shirt. The chicken had seemed calm and not inclined to peck. After all, I told myself, they let someone reach underneath them to take their eggs. Surely I could just sidle up to them, one by one, scoop them up, and deposit them in the hen house.

Except that, up close, these chickens were really big. Exceptionally beautiful, I noted, as I admired the fluff of feathers above their talons and the way the black and brown melted together over their sharp beaks. Surely holiday samaritanism didn't extend to being pecked and clawed by angry chickens whose walk I was interrupting.

Yet, bravely, I crept closer.

One of the chickens made a run for it. "No!" I yelled, shooing it back onto someone's front lawn. "Don't go in the street!" If that chicken found itself under a car's tire on my watch, I thought, I would forever be branded a chicken killer or, at least, very bad luck for any chickens who happen to cross my path.

Hubby ran ahead to do some reconnaissance. There was an open gate, he said, but could we be sure that was how the chickens had escaped?

We couldn't, but there is only so much one can be expected to do when a neighbor's chickens are taking a Christmas walk through the neighborhood.

So I herded them.

Maybe it's a skill I've picked up in four months of country living. Maybe it was simply ingenuity borne of necessity. Maybe the city girl in me hates to back down.

But I managed to get the chickens to the side yard, where Hubby waited with his hand on the open gate.

"Go home," I said sternly, as one might to a vicious looking dog who you just know will be obedient enough to take your order to heart if only you sound serious enough and wish it to be the case hard enough.

The chickens pretended not to understand.

I made as if to pick one up. I can't say if I would have -- if, say, I would have actually touched it had the chicken called me on my game of chicken. Luckily, it blinked first and ran for the safety of the yard.

And with that example set, it wasn't too hard to convince the others that bolting for the yard was a great idea. They are, after all, chickens, who I understand are not particularly original thinkers.

As for us, Hubby and I felt a little bit less ashamed about all the presents we and The Boy had received from other lovely neighbors over the past few days. Birthday and Christmas gifts for The Boy, cookies and party invitations for us. Just when you think you know how well you picked your new home, you find out the neighbors are even more neighborly than you had imagined.

Hubby and I may not have bought gifts for the other kids on the block, and we still haven't delivered holiday cards because we disagree about the name of one neighbor and want to make sure we get it right before we drop off any of the cards and, besides, now I have to write thank you notes as well. We may, in short, have been unprepared for just how generous the people living around one can be. But at least by herding the chickens home we contributed our little bit of kindness to Christmas on our block.

Birthday Boy

2007-12-24T09:36:00.000-08:00

Having a baby is, in some ways, like conducting a controlled experiment testing your unfounded beliefs about cause and effect in your own life.

Like my certainty that sleeping eight hours a night makes me smarter. (Or the corollary that having a baby has made me much, much stupider.) Or my faith that the more I practice yoga the more good things will happen to me. (Hey, it introduced me to Hubby, and I'm sure hoping my Asheville yoga classes bring some focus to an otherwise meandering life. Which leads me to feel quite certain that I will lose my way forever and spend the rest of my life searching for some shred of meaning to my sad existence because I have to miss a week of yoga while The Boy's school is closed for the holidays.)

Yesterday I received a damaging confirmation of my unfounded belief that a bit of indulgence, however deserved, is simply not without consequences.

Curse ye fates! For when is indulgence more deserved than on one's first birthday? When should one expect consequence-free pointless pleasure? If not on one's first birthday, then never??? The thought is too sad to contemplate.

Not that The Boy exactly leads a life of asceticism. Still, when a body is that young and unsullied, parents like me and Hubby tend to obsess over every perceived pollutant -- from the fears of off-gassing that led us to buy an unfinished crib that we got rid of a month later when it turned out to pose a strangulation threat, to our fear of medication that faded greatly once we realized that a simple dose of Tylenol will actually make a teething or feverish or ear-infection-afflicted boy feel much, much better, to our insistence on all-natural house cleaning products except when the chemical ones work a lot better.

For all these reasons, and probably a few more too embarrassing to admit, The Boy approached his first birthday without ever having experienced first-hand the dubious pleasures of wheat and dairy.

In this case, our parental craziness was not without foundation. Among the other joys of breastfeeding The Boy and I shared was the discovery that he had more than a few food allergies -- dairy among them. We never tested wheat because I don't eat it myself, as I have what I like to call a "sensitivity" to it which doubtless belongs above on my list of unfounded beliefs about cause and effect in my life.

Still, Hubby has the dreaded peanut allergy, and it's hereditary, so in this case, I am allowed to harbor crazy fears about food on behalf of The Boy.

But a first birthday is a first birthday, and cake and ice cream were a must. So we invited some neighbors to join us in some afternoon cake eating, and, in the meantime, did the other things that make first birthdays so special.

Like first birthday presents. The Boy chose just one to open in the morning -- a little piano with real keys that make sounds whether you bang them with your fingers or with the little plastic German boy you like to carry around in your mouth or with the wooden blocks your grandmother gave you.

Small toy pianos are also good for hoisting yourself up to standing, an increasingly favored activity that suggests walking is right around the corner. (An event to await breathlessly or one to dread as one spots all the dangers lurking in the house? Discuss.) And when you really get warmed up, you can bang a few times, pull yourself up, and warble away. The Boy, in short, was thrilled with his first birthday gift.

By the time he had figured out how to pull the top off the piano (not a deliberate design feature) the morning rain had cleared up and a perfectly gorgeous, un-December-like day had begun. So, post-nap, we loaded The Boy in the car for a walk in the nearby Botanical Gardens on the UNC Asheville campus.

Actually, even if it had been pouring rain, we would have found an excuse to put The Boy in the car. Because there is one event that accompanies turning a year old that is even more magnificent, of even great importance, perhaps the most exciting thing ever and even better than cake and ice cream.

Turning the car seat around to face forward.

The Boy found this new situation a hoot. He laughed all the way to the botanical gardens. He grinned and clapped and kicked his feet. We wondered if we shouldn't have waited to turn around his car seat until our next ten-hour drive to St. Louis in the spring.

We returned from the botanical gardens with time to open another gift before our cake-eating neighbors arrived.

This one, from Grandma, was a wooden box, full of beautiful wooden blocks, with wheels and a string for pulling. The Boy grabbed the blocks faster than I could put them back in the box in a losing effort to keep them out of the reach of dogs' teeth. So far all are still accounted for, but it's only been a day and the dogs have been out in the yard a lot.

With neighbors came yet more gifts -- a set of construction trucks with the wheels that are a current source of fascination and a musical thing that talks a lot and flashes lights and I haven't figured out. The Boy likes it a lot. I don't think I will for long.

And then there we were, with our new neighbors sharing a glass of wine (with us) and cake (with The Boy). We sure wouldn't be doing this in Long Beach.

The Boy approached the piece of cake Hubby placed on his high chair tray cautiously, as is his nature. A little pinch of cake, another little pinch.

And then he figured it out. Cake is to be eaten by holding great huge pieces and shoving them as far in your mouth as they can go.

Inexplicably, we have no pictures of this joy. We decided it was high time we figure out how to use the video camera I bought Hubby for Father's Day. It has snippets of The Boy at six and seven months that I like to play back for myself from time to time, but the technological challenge of putting them on line for others to enjoy has stymied me. Maybe if Audrey hadn't chewed the necessary USB cable two months ago I'd be more motivated. Or maybe I ought to be more motivated to buy a new USB cable. At any rate, if you want to see The Boy eating birthday cake, you will have to either come visit and view it on the video camera or buy us a new USB cable or wait until his second birthday.

Also inexplicably, we gave The Boy as much ice cream as he wanted. I do not know why it occurred to neither of us to stop after the first bowl. Indulgence is one thing when you can chide yourself with your own stupidity as you find yourself huddled in a cold bathroom at 3:30 in the morning wishing like you've never wished for anything before that you could be back in your own bed sleeping.

The only immediate effect of the cake and ice cream was a sugar rush of which I've never seen the likes before. If The Boy could walk, he would have run laps around the house. As it was, he repeatedly threw himself at one of our neighbors, demanding that she pick him up, then, with a screech of delight, threw himself back at the floor so he could crawl after her and once again grab at her legs and haul himself up to ask to be picked up again. Luckily, her own children are grown and she doesn't have a grandchild handy so she was more than happy to help The Boy out.

And MORE gifts to open after the guests left and before the sugar high wore off. The Boy banged his piano impatiently while Hubby assembled the wooden walker. The second the handle was secure, he grabbed it with both hands, stood, and pushed it out of the living room and into the foyer.

This act would not seem so remarkable if The Boy knew how to walk.

Apparently, he realized that he can not, in fact, walk after he pushed the walker into the front door. At this point, he opted to crawl it back to the living room, a reasonably impressive feat, but not one worth videotaping.

By the time we made it through the animal book with the prominent basset hound puppy and the magnetic animals he might or might not recognize as resembling his bath toys and therefore as being related to the funny sounds Mommy and Daddy make with them when he's in the bath and the electronic drum that is just as annoying when you elect the Spanish option he was too tired to see straight.

So we gave him a birthday bath and he fell asleep drinking his birthday bottle.

Which would be a lovely end to the story of the Birthday Boy. But then there'd be no moral. Not that I need a moral. A wonderful, fun, sunny first birthday is all I need, and I'll speak for The Boy on that as well.

But ice cream and cake, it seems, can hurt one's tummy come nine thirty. And sleeping with Mommy when one's tummy is hurting and one has spotted Daddy saying goodnight before heading for the day bed in the office is not much fun come eleven o'clock. Especially when Mommy's chest is kind of bony and uncomfortable and she is not bright enough to figure out that those screams are borne of rage, not pain, and all you really want is your Daddy.

Or maybe she's just tired and warm in the bed and a little bit offended that she's not good enough for you and therefore pretends not to know what you really want for five or ten minutes.

Ultimately, The Boy spent the night of his first birthday sleeping it off with Daddy while I was the one on the day bed in the office. Which I guess is only fair, since a year ago he'd spent an awful lot of time sleeping close to me.

Besides, it turns out one can get a pretty good night's sleep on the day bed in the office where no babies are kicking you and no husbands are snoring and you can sleep off your own over-indulgence in ice cream and, yes, cake. Because occasionally ignoring your own unfounded beliefs about your "sensitivity" to wheat doesn't mean you can't go right back to them the very next day.

The Gift of the (Aunt) Mary

2007-12-18T07:05:00.000-08:00

When The Boy's Aunt Mary met him for the first time, she gave him a lovely blanket she had knit, adorned with stripes of orange and tan and green, just the right size for a baby boy. "His cousin says it's so bright it'll wake him up," she laughed, but The Boy slept quite cozily beneath it.

He was six weeks old then, and by six months, the blanket had become a staple of our lives. If it was a tad chilly during our morning walk on the beach, I tucked the blanket around him in the stroller; his chin shone baby-skin white against it and he looked warm and safe. If he fell asleep in his car seat while Hubby and I grabbed a quiet lunch out, he snoozed beneath it, the stripes wrapping him securely. We went nowhere without Aunt Mary's blanket.

When The Boy and I flew to our new home in Asheville, Aunt Mary's blanket was peeking out of his overstuffed diaper bag. When we explored our new neighborhood, it lay in the basket under the stroller. The Boy grew, and Aunt Mary's blanket settled into lap rug status, still perfect to keep him warm on mountain fall mornings in his miniature fisherman's sweater and wool stocking cap with the football stitched on the brim.

And then Aunt Mary's blanket disappeared.

"Have you seen Aunt Mary's blanket?" I asked Hubby one morning. I was slightly crazed, as I often am when we are trying to leave the house on a cold morning. A few minutes ticks into several minutes, which inevitably become fifteen or twenty as I corral and layer a crawling boy, put on and remove my own gloves ten or twelve times to snap snaps and guide small thumbs inside tiny mittens and pull socks up and pants legs down.

"Nope," Hubby answered. He doesn't sweat going outside in cold weather the way I do. As long as The Boy is wearing a hat, Hubby figures he'll stay reasonably warm.

"He needs something over his legs," I moaned. Although the days here tend to reach bearable temperatures, the mornings can be bitter. Our morning walks to the park, where Hubby throws a tennis ball for the girls and The Boy and I huddle together pretending to enjoy the spectacle, were often nothing more than stubbornness on my part. "I can survive another real winter. I think I can, I think I can . . ."

"The blanket my cousin made him will be fine," Hubby said. His voice carried a note of decisiveness with which I vehemently disagreed.

I became even more certain that The Boy could not do without Aunt Mary's blanket when Hubby returned downstairs with the replacement blanket. It was flannel, not knit. It was a serene green, not bright slashes of color. It was bigger than lap rug size. It would not do at all.

Still, I said nothing. Sometimes it is best to let your partner do some parenting, even if he's wrong.

You'd think the sight of The Boy awkwardly wrapped in a green flannel blanket would have inspired me to find Aunt Mary's blanket, but it didn't. Apparently I was too busy searching for my own lost life.

And so the weeks passed. An unseasonably warm spell was met with relief, as The Boy could be strolled to school blanket-less. Cold days became an occasion for unearthing the sweet collection of blankets in which we used to swaddle The Boy, back in the days when he could be swaddled and leaving the house was not cause for fear of frostbite. And still, Aunt Mary's blanket remained mysteriously absent.

Hubby and I wondered again about it this weekend.

We had taken a drive to Maggie Valley as The Boy napped in the back seat. Maggie Valley, it turned out, had little to offer a family out for a Sunday excursion. If we had been looking to rent a room in a motor hotel where we could sit in a hot tub next to a running stream, we were in the right place, at least according to the hopeful advertisements outside a surprising number of motels adorning the main road. The stream, apparently, dipped and turned to accommodate the maximum number of hot tubs.

Alas, we were looking for nothing more than a cozy meal and perhaps the chance to purchase those last few holiday gifts. Maggie Valley offered nothing to meet these needs.

Eager to extend The Boy's nap, we kept driving, out of Maggie Valley, down the road to the ski slopes and the Cherokee casino.

I noted with some vague interest the snow dusting the sides of the road. Mostly, I was glad it was here, and not on the side of my road at home.

Then I looked through the windshield and saw the same fine white dust dashing horizontally across my line of vision. My line of vision isn't the best -- the only way I can tell it's raining short of getting wet is to examine puddles for ripples of raindrops because I am absolutely incapable of seeing precipitation falling from the sky -- so I figured if I could see the snow there was more than a little bit of it.

The car slid on the icy road.

"It says 'last exit before Parkway,'" I said hopefully as I pointed at a sign on the side of the road.

"Do you want to try the Parkway?" Hubby asked.

Hmm. Higher elevation, windier, narrower road. The Parkway did not seem the wisest solution.

"It's kind of windy," I allowed.

Hubby must have found the weather conditions more than a little worrisome, because he turned the car around and drove back through Maggie Valley instead of wending his way through new, no more interesting but at least undiscovered, towns.

We stopped for lunch in Waynesville, which we had visited before, but which we knew would at least offer food and warmth. And as we wandered Main Street after lunch, we wrapped our arms around The Boy to keep him warm because we lacked Aunt Mary's blanket.

We came home in the afternoon with one more short outing on our list -- a visit to the music store around the corner from our house where we hoped to find a gift for our musically inclined nephew.

Hubby grabbed The Boy and I grabbed myself. We dashed through a cutting wind to the store, quickly discovered nothing there, and walked back in a lull between gusts of wind.

Hubby let out a gasp.

There on the sidewalk, covered in leaves and the dampness of more than one rainfall, was Aunt Mary's blanket.

"Maybe I dropped it on the way to the bagel shop one morning," Hubby laughed.

"I'll bet it fell out of the stroller when we walked to Greenlife," I said, certain now that I remembered exactly when it had happened.

Aunt Mary's blanket is washed now and almost dry and ready to use.

But why the Gift of the Magi reference? What made me immediately think of that story when I first saw the blanket, its fall colors poking out of the faded fall leaves? What, in short, is the irony in the return of Aunt Mary's gift? (What makes the hair combs useless because the wife has cut her hair to buy a chain for the watch her husband sold to buy her the combs? for those of you a bit vague in the classic literature department.)

Well, I thought hopefully, maybe the irony is that although we found Aunt Mary's blanket there will be no more need for it because the winter will continue to be uncharacteristically warm and I will make it to spring without ever once having to wear the Timberland boots I bought in college for the deep, cold Providence snowfalls.

To the contrary, the irony, it turns out, is that -- far from my fantasy of endless warm days being fulfilled -- a light snow fell that night, dusting the ground of our front yard. It looked just like the dusting of snow on the road outside Maggie Valley.

I Visit a Pawn Shop

2007-12-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

For most of my life, pawn shops have been a sort of fictional abstraction. They are, to my mind, the places where seedy criminals in police procedurals go to sell stolen watches and down-on-their-luck sad sacks shakily forfeit their wedding rings for a hit of heroin. Or, in earlier, G-rated memories, the places frequented by Andy Capp. Since I was about seven years old when last I read an Andy Capp comic, I didn't understand that he was both seedy and down-on-his-luck and that a comic strip about an alcoholic actually isn't a very funny thing at all.

I imagine in more recent years I've seen real pawn shops -- perhaps driving through a part of L.A. I only ever drove through to get to Dodger Stadium or the Disney Concert Hall. But I surely don't recall getting close enough to, say, look in the window. Even when my apartment at 92nd and Riverside in Manhattan was not considered prime real estate, I'm pretty certain there were no pawn shops nearby. (Off Track Betting, on the other hand, was a mere three-minute walk from my front door.)

But now I live in Asheville. And not only do I live half a mile from a pawn shop, I have, as of last Saturday, been in one.

Before you form your opinion of my neighborhood, I must explain that -- the presence of both a Wendy's and a McDonald's within a quarter mile of each other notwithstanding -- we are at least upscale enough that the store does not call itself a pawn shop. No indeed. It is a consignment store.

I am happily familiar with consignment stores. Consignment stores are where I sell the turtlenecks I received two Christmases ago. A consignment store played a large and cathartic role in my abandonment of a promising career as a law school professor, and I'm sure there are some happy professionals wearing my hip teacher clothes somewhere. Better them than me.

No, when we first arrived here, I was far less troubled by the consignment store with the collection of bicycles in front and the amps in the window than I was by the bleached strip malls up the block. And the aforementioned Wendy's. And the general clutter of nondescript buildings and the sorts of store signs one usually sees in deeply depressed economies that line the main thoroughfare by our house.

I arrived here, you see, straight off the pleasures of Second Street in the Belmont Shores neighborhood of Long Beach. Daily -- or close to it -- I meandered half a mile past well kept beach homes to a stretch of shops and restaurants and happy pedestrians smiling in the sea breeze. Second Street had its share of dusty old stores like Herman's Shoes and the American Cancer Society Thrift Shop. But, surrounded by Peet's Coffee and Banana Republic and Taco Surf, they were funky, not sad.

I failed to find similar charms on my first few walks up Merrimon Avenue last August. Narrow sidewalks dumped me and The Boy's stroller practically into the stream of traffic. My legs protested the hills and the heat. I felt alone and stupid strolling down a sidewalk plainly made, not for strolling, but to provide a small buffer zone between the parking lots fronting the stores and the traffic speeding its way past.

I cried for Second Street. I longed for some remote plausibility to the rumors of zoning plans designed to make Merrimon Avenue more pedestrian-friendly (wider sidewalks, parking lots relegated to the backs of the stores). I imagined myself five years from now enjoying my daily walks in Asheville so much that I no longer missed the smell of the ocean. And I despaired of walking anywhere in the present.

And yet. Slowly, my gluteus maximus adjusted to walking uphill. Hubby discovered some lovely side streets that led more pleasantly to Atlanta Bread Company and the Children's Trading Post. Urban Burrito soothed my ache for Wahoo's Fish Tacos and provided me with a good reason to venture into the bleached strip mall and discover it wasn't such a scary place after all.

These days I don't even notice the Wendy's. I know that jewel upon jewel lies nestled among those nondescript Merrimon buildings: Jus' Running with the owner who pooh-poohed my claim that running destroyed my knees because "you're so slight you shouldn't have any problems with your knees" and thus secured him a place in my heart forever; The Wine Guy, who turns out to be a gal, although she can't be expected to carry Two Buck Chuck; The Toy Box, where they let The Boy play with the wooden train set for as long as he likes without ever pushing me to buy anything (rest assured, however, that my Christmas expedition has paid for a year's worth of playing with the train set). I don't even mind knowing that I will never live a few blocks from a pedestrian thoroughfare lined with elms and charming storefronts.

I am, in short, ready for the neighborhood pawn shop.

It was Hubby's idea. Frankly, I was at the point where I didn't even see it as I walked by. It is located on the downward slope of the walk home, just before we veer left through the park. It has its own front walk, separated from the sidewalk by a set of stairs and a reason to walk up them -- a reason not provided for me by the fast-food restaurant next door. I don't have a burning desire to buy a used bike and I don't like fluorescent lights. Don't even get me started on what my mother would have said if I had told her, growing up, that I would like to visit a pawn shop. On my own, I was plainly on a path that would never take me to one.

But Hubby does have a burning desire to buy a used bike. Many used bikes. I am truly not certain how many used bikes Hubby has purchased because: a) he tends to pull them up on Craig's List to admire them far more often than he actually buys them; and b) when he does buy them he takes them apart and reassembles them into new Frankenstein-like vehicles of his own design.

So there we were, out for a stroll on a Saturday afternoon, approaching the pawn shop. And Hubby's eyes lit up.

I could have refused to accompany him, remained a perfectly content pawn shop virgin for the rest of my life. But it is the holiday season. Besides, he had control of the stroller with my baby boy inside. So I followed him through the not-so-menacing doors.

We were greeted warmly when we entered the store. I fooled myself into believing I might look like someone who is perfectly comfortable in a pawn shop.

Assuming an air of interest, I wandered among the keyboards and drum sets, looking them over as if deciding which one best suited my needs. Unfortunately, as I am not in fact accustomed to wandering among keyboards and drum sets, my shoulder glanced what sounded like a snare drum, and I felt all eyes turn to me.

Trying for all the world to look like it was no big deal, I steadied the drum and turned, just at the right angle to bang my knee against a guitar. It is not a given that I would have caught it, so I counted myself doing very well when I did.

Shuffling my way out of the music section and telling myself I wouldn't have to return until The Boy one day demands his own drum set, I looked around hopefully for gift ideas.

The remote control trucks were actually kind of neat. But until the mortgage catches up with us, I'm not ready to wrap battered used boxes with heartily handled toys for my beloved eleven-month-old. Hubby eyed the leather jackets longingly, but I just couldn't see him wearing a leather jacket someone else once wore. Or a leather jacket at all, but don't tell him I said that.

And the rest was the kind of stuff I might find shopping for empowering under different circumstances. Power tools and dehumidifiers and shovels -- the sorts of things I used to borrow from the men in my neighborhood in St. Louis, when I was a single female homeowner and proud to own my own power drill, damn it.

Now, however, I sit with my baby in the front yard as my husband hangs the Christmas lights and cleans the gutters and rakes the leaves. It's not that I no longer remember how to use a power drill. It's just that I'm more likely to use it building a crib. And it is, after all, so easy to let Hubby do the stuff I don't like to do.

Which means a few things. It means I am a 41-year-old mother who does laundry while her husband tackles the manly chores. It means there is nothing wrong with putting aside the power tools for a stroller and a high chair and a beautiful baby boy. And, best of all, it means I will never have to visit a pawn shop again.

Yogini Again

2007-12-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

Most people, I understand, will not be unduly disappointed if they are unable to wrap their feet behind their head.

Most people who know me know that is not the case where I am concerned.

Once upon a time, I lived in Los Angeles, a hotbed of uber-yoga, a place where classes constantly challenged me and no one looked askance when I wandered the aisles of Trader Joe's in stained yoga pants and hair dried into clumps from the sweat. I could take classes whenever I wanted -- no baby, frequently no job, no need to pay because I was an instructor.

Under these circumstances it becomes possible to devote one's life to following the path of yoga. Or at least the parts of the path that one can follow while still living a semi-normal, consumerist life with a sane, non-yoga-addicted spouse.

Ironically, my path led me to a life stripped of yoga classes.

First it was our move to Long Beach. I sampled a few studios and felt lost without the familiar comforts and challenges of the Center for Yoga on Larchmont. I did a little teaching in the ghettoized afternoons before the popular post-work class, but the connection just wasn't there. For a time I drove up to L.A. a couple of times a week for my mysore class, but everyone knows that yoga and L.A. freeways just don't mix.

Then there was the pregnancy. I put together a lovely little practice for myself. Alone. In a room so small I had to take care not to smash my face on the dresser as I bowed in my sun salutations.

Which was fine until it came time for the post-pregnancy yoga. Any new mother who has tried to get back to her yoga practice will recognize these popular offerings: The When Is There Ever Time??? yoga. The What Is That Blobby Thing Between My Swollen Breasts and My Varicose Vein-Covered Legs??? yoga. The I'm So Tired I Think I'll Take a Nap on the Yoga Mat yoga.

It's been eleven months now since I ignored all the medical advice to take it easy for a few weeks after birth and did a defiant bound twisted high lunge in the living room when my mother-in-law was visiting her two-week-old grandson. And while I now have a lovely large room in which to practice my yoga and a view of the trees outside the windows as I bow in my sun salutations and ceilings high enough that I can circle my arms and gather energy instead of bruised knuckles, my practice is not what it once was.

As I mentioned, I miss being able to put my feet behind my head.

Yes, I know the yogi thing to do would be to respect my body's limitations and their precious cause. And, to be perfectly clear, it was worth it. It was worth it. It was worth it.

But I miss that clarity of purpose that yoga brought to my life. I miss wanting to eat healthy foods because I can honestly feel the difference. I miss the certainty of following my heart because I know what my heart really wants.

Hubby tells me I need to go to yoga classes.

I answer that he is stoned if he thinks I have time for yoga classes.

He offers to juggle his schedule so he can watch The Boy while I go to yoga classes.

I say, "Mmhmm" and turn on Reno 911 because I know it will distract him.

I did try a few Asheville studios a few times.

On my birthday, soon after we arrived in Asheville, I went to an all levels yoga class at a cozy little studio in funky West Asheville. It was nice to hear music other than one of the three Krishna Das CD's I faithfully put on when I practice at home. And the teacher was a lovely person with whom I will, one day, I promised both her and myself, go to a meditation practice. (You think I need it??) But sore muscles were not had.

Last month I ventured to a class of something called anahata yoga. The teacher said some nice things about energy but I didn't have to summon a whole lot of it to make it through class.

My options, it seemed, were dwindling.

On a visit to Asheville a couple years ago I took a class at a very scary studio where overly tanned, too-thin, suburban-looking fifty-year-olds kicked my butt in shoulder stand and the teacher frightened Hubby by changing clothes in front of an office window under which Hubby and his brother were parked. I was not anxious to return.

Which left me with . . . only a studio close to me and promising some tough classes.

I begged off because they heat the classes to 80 degrees and I have low blood pressure and a tendency to faint in steam saunas. I moaned about their schedule and my limited time and the fact that I can no longer put my feet behind my head.

And yesterday I went to a class there.

I sweated. I shook. I did not faint.

Today I am taking my sore butt back and buying a one-month unlimited pass.

I have studied the schedule and underlined all the classes I might take in order to make a one-month unlimited pass an economical choice. Most of the classes I have underlined start at noon. This means that I sit unshowered doing a few hours of work in the morning, go to a yoga class during the heart of the day when normal people are eating lunch or plugging away at a juicy work project or doing something that does not involve getting sweaty and sore, and take a shower at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I can't remember why, a few days ago, such a schedule didn't make sense to me.

Which just proves how great this yoga studio is. Because plainly it has me back on the path, where my days are, naturally, structured around my yoga practice.

Home Improvement

2007-11-30T07:17:00.000-08:00

We have a fence.

It is amazing how something that would have mattered so terribly little to me fifteen years ago is such a source of joy today.

No longer must I stand outside on the deck, The Boy wrapped in a down lap duvet, yelling at the dogs to hurry up and pee already. No more days of leaving them trapped on the deck while the house is cleaned and I look out the window every few minutes to be sure Lilah hasn't escaped. Best of all, I look out at our fenced-in yard and I can see The Boy growing up, turning the tin-roofed tool shed into a fort, throwing a ball with Hubby or me or Audrey, imagining whole worlds in the corners where the bushes hide him from the house.

I think about being four years old and playing "Here Comes the Witch" with my best friend Julie and riding the huge flying birds that to my distressed mother were bushes not designed to carry imaginative little girls. And I feel very grown-up and a little bit scared and very in love with The Boy and our home.

We are in that stage of new home ownership when we magnanimously give ourselves permission to buy important bits of home improvement that we can't afford. Like the fence -- something we promised ourselves as soon as Hubby realized how much work it is to train dogs to respect an electric fence. Or the bench and shelf set for the front hall that Hubby picked off the Pottery Barn website, much to my surprise and delight. Or the lovely sleeper sofa we bought at Crate and Barrel in Charlotte.

We went to Charlotte on Tuesday, when Hubby took the day off as scant compensation for working Thanksgiving Day. Charlotte lies two hours away from Asheville by not very interesting highways and is the biggest city between Washington, DC, and Atlanta. Neither of these facts recommended it as a destination for our vacation day.

Charlotte is, however, home to Trader Joe's. This status has left me wildly impatient to make the trek.

I justified it by hunting down what advertised itself as a kids museum where The Boy could stretch his legs -- and arms, as crawling is his sole means of locomotion that does not involve Mommy or Daddy or some other adult he has decided to trust. Not the best reason to drive to Charlotte, Hubby sighed, but we're parents now.

Then he gave me a surprise even bigger than the Pottery Barn bench and shelf set. He suggested we go to Crate and Barrel to look at sleeper sofas while we were there.

This is not, you must understand, the way Hubby traditionally shops. He favors the local stores, where you might have to wade through a sea of cheap and ugly but can make it if you hold out the hope that there is a gem buried in the back. Crate and Barrel, where everything is stylish and tasteful and therefore expensive is simply too easy.

Over the three months that we have lived in Asheville we have roundly exhausted the supply of such local furniture stores. We have repeatedly visited Tysons in Black Mountain, an endless maze of room after room of wood furniture, wicker furniture, bamboo furniture, patio furniture, and probably more that I haven't seen because you need a map or a salesperson to find your way around. Their collection of sleeper sofas, however, failed to make the grade.

We visited Hafferty's, a pre-fab furniture warehouse, but backed off a decent looking couch because of our lurking suspicion that the quality might not be what we hoped. Our neighbor assured us as much with a story of a sadly decrepit coffee table purchased there.

We even made the rounds of Ethan Allan, where an "interior designer"/salesperson created questionable ensembles of upholstery and throw pillows on a computer screen before my very frightened eyes.

And now, to my delight, we were visiting Crate and Barrel.

Hubby sat and poked and unfolded and tested while I followed The Boy on his journey across a playground of furniture just made for pulling oneself up to standing. The salesperson showed remarkable restraint as The Boy reached for a collection of fragile-looking bamboo baskets and then banged the Kona coffee table with the plastic holder of its information. Other customers pretended not to mind as The Boy showed off his new skill of yelling with impressive force for such a small human being. I wiped so much drool off of tabletops and chair arms that my sleeves were damp until dinner.

And then we were paying for a couch. A lovely couch that will be delivered to our home sometime early next year and will force us to turn that room you never get around to decorating and use for all the stuff that doesn't fit anywhere into a proper library. Surely, once we have a tasteful and sophisticated couch from Crate and Barrel the rest of our home will be perennially clean, warm, and sunny, just like their catalog.

From Crate and Barrel, we headed to Charlotte at Play, the advertised kids museum. I could hear Hubby's sharp intake of breath as the directions led us to a vast strip mall anchored by a Lowe's. I harbored the hope that his unguarded expression was merely disappointment that he didn't need anything from Lowe's and would have to hang out in Charlotte at Play.

In fact, he seemed to enjoy it almost as much as The Boy. He snapped pictures as The Boy played the child-sized Melissa and Doug piano that I now long to see under our Christmas tree. Plainly I do not know how much a child-sized Melissa and Doug piano costs. He slid with The Boy down the pirate ship slide. He sat in a corner of the speed raceway and let The Boy push cars into him. A fine time was had by all.

But whatever excitement and awe The Boy might have felt as he gazed upon the expanse of fun that was Charlotte at Play, it was nothing compared to the giddiness I experienced when we entered Trader Joe's. There was my brown rice pasta, my sundried tomato bruschetta, my beloved dried Tart Montgomery Cherries. We filled two shopping carts with booty and I knew that I would return one day, undaunted by the crushingly boring drive.

We had dinner downtown, where the plethora of cars reminded me of L.A., but the number of pedestrians out for the evening did not. I watched the bank trainees breaking for dinner in their starched shirts and suit pants and felt sad for them and for the person I was fifteen years ago. And as we left Charlotte, I looked forward to the uncongested streets of Asheville, even if they lack a Crate and Barrel.

We pulled up to our home at nine thirty. Our new fence glowed slightly in the darkness. It looked different from the house we bought, our definitive imprint on the neighborhood. It is more than a fence. It is a declaration that we are making a home here.

Now if only we could do something about those storm windows.

Why I Am a Tad Cranky These Days

2007-11-28T17:53:00.001-08:00

I have lately come to realize that I am the Barack Obama of baby care decisionmakers. The choices Hubby and I have made tend toward the more liberal side of the spectrum, but not so far off the grid that we fall into Dennis Kucinich territory. We overthink everything without, thankfully, approaching Hillary Clinton equivocation. And we end up, like Obama, making heartfelt, lefty, but far from radical decisions.

Our record speaks for itself. Certain we wanted our son close by while we slept but unable to commit to the extreme of bed sharing for fear of rolling over and suffocating our newborn while as we shared sleep, we opted for the conveniently compromising co-sleeper. The baby sling was a wondrous thing in those early days when any fresh air was a balm to my withering sense of self, but, frankly, there were plenty of times when the stroller suited both me and The Boy just fine. We might even have gone for circumcision if we had uncovered a shred of evidence that it imparts a health benefit or two.

In short, if there's a middle path – preferably one that brings us close enough to the natural-way, selfless style of parenting to lend us a touch of cred – we're on it.

There is, however, one area of decisionmaking that simply does not lend itself to such a satisfying resolution. Sleep training.

I can hear everyone who remembers those years between infancy and "don't touch me, Mom" shuddering. It is a decision without a middle road. Either you let your child cry while you match him tear-for-tear in the next room or you put him in bed with you and try to pretend that your partner really doesn't mind sleeping on the day bed in the office.

To sleep train, or not to sleep train? That is, oh yes, the question.

Our recent bout with that seemingly lifelong conundrum came at the end of a daycare cold which brought with it a hacking cough. The same cough I have, in fact. The same cough that also wakes me up in the middle of the night. Except I am content to give snoring Hubby a kick, roll over, and go back to sleep.

At nearly 11 months, however, The Boy is old enough to know that he does not want to roll over and go back to sleep in his lonely crib. He has a fuzzy recollection of those nights a few weeks ago when an ear infection forced Mommy to prop him up on pillows in her bed (formerly known as her and Daddy's bed, but now Daddy is sleeping on the day bed in the office). And The Boy wants that lovely arrangement again.

The Boy came to this conclusion in the middle of my REM sleep. This is not a good time to discuss with one's partner the merits of Ferberizing versus letting the babe into bed so we can all just sleep and worry about creating a bed-sharing monster some other time.

Ferberizing was not a method we embraced easily. The Boy was a phenomenal sleeper as an infant, generally awakening only once a night (though not always going back to sleep particularly promptly). Then, suddenly, he was five months old and he was awakening every two hours. I can tend to a baby once a night with an impressive degree of cheerfulness. A second nighttime rendezvous renders me a bit less likely to coo in delight with him. By the third time, you will spot me tromping down the hall with him held like a football under my arm muttering, "I will tend to your basic needs, but I will not be nurturing, god damn it!"

A week of two-hour blocks of sleep got me on-line reading about Ferberizing. And what I discovered was that there are a great many parents out there who agonize over it. Probably, it is the most agonizing decision we make in that first year because it is so starkly a matter of whose needs you put first – your beloved darling's or, sad to say, your own.

But I also found that, for some families, it works. And you don't know if yours is one unless you try. So we tried. And it worked. I never had to hold my breath and fight back tears as I stared at a clock for more than five very, very long minutes of screaming from my child. And in no time at all we were experiencing, dare I say it, eight uninterrupted hours of sleep.

But, of course, nothing lasts when you are tripling in size and brain matter every few months. And so, this week, it was time to decide yet again.

Ferberizing, I discovered last time we went through this, is a lot more traumatic at nine or ten or eleven months than it is at five. Because at nine or ten or eleven months your child gets angry. Very, very angry. Angry enough to cry until you recognize the error of your ways.

Still, I am haunted by an article in the New York Times that I read during my pregnancy. It described an epidemic of nighttime bed shuffling as children for whom no sleeping boundaries had been set take over their parents' beds at night, forcing the adults to curl up in their children's rooms to sleep under the princess canopy by the glow of the Spiderman night light.

So when I heard the cries at 2 a.m. Saturday night, I rolled myself out of bed and across the hall. I put my hand reassuringly on The Boy's back and said, "It's okay, Mommy's here."

Plainly, it was not enough for The Boy that Mommy be "here." The point was for Mommy to be here holding him in her arms, a Ferber no-no.

The Boy reached out for me, grabbing at my wrists, hoisting himself toward me, banging his forehead on the bars of his crib, while I repeated in an increasingly clenched voice, "Mommy's here. It's okay."

Finally, it wasn't okay because I really had to pee. So I left him. And he screamed.

I returned, we replayed, I left and stared at the clock while he screamed.

And eventually it worked. The Boy slept and I lay awake drowning in my own guilt.

The next morning I muttered to Hubby, "Should we just put him in bed with us if it happens again tonight?" and Hubby said, "I don't know."

So I did.

It was not, I am sad to report, the idyllic solution for which I had been hoping. The Boy kicked me in the stomach. He tried to climb the headboard. He bounced his butt up and down so strongly the whole bed shook. And I concluded that the book I read claiming that mothers and babies both sleep better when they sleep together is full of crap.

It is possible that The Boy agrees, I reckoned at five 0'clock this morning when the house had remained silent all night. Maybe he figured out that sleeping with Mommy isn't all it's cracked up to be.

He did wake up fifteen minutes later and it was a struggle to convince him that 5:15 is a terrific time to get a little bit more sleep, but that hour or so we snoozed quietly together was . . . heaven.

So what will I do if we wakes up again tonight? I will remind myself that all children walk eventually and drink out of a cup when they're ready and, yes, sleep in their own bed, even if it takes until puberty.

I may not always like my decision to abandon Ferber for a nighttime of stomach-kicking and ear-grabbing. But it is my decision, and as long as I make it with love it's the right one.

Besides, it's always possible that tonight will be the night he stays asleep.

Fame

2007-11-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching Fame.

Not your traditional Thanksgiving activity, I'll admit. But neither is having lunch at a Mexican restaurant on Hendersonville Road before Hubby heads into work. Who needs tradition when you've got a movie that reminds you of being 14 and in love with acting and heart-full of the belief that you were going to burn through life with energy and happiness and bigger-than-lifeness and, well, fame.

Honestly, what I remember most isn't the first time I saw the movie. It's coming home between the matinee and evening performances of Dracula in ninth grade to blast the song on my father's turntable as my friend Dana and I sang with far more passion than tunefulness. Fame! I want to live forever! I want to learn how to fly . . . high!

The next day I cried as they struck the set. Mr. Feldman put his arm around me and explained how actors have to move on after each performance. He made me feel as if I was an actor, and I realize now that a little bit of that kindness has stayed with me.

I watched the beginning of the movie with The Boy as the afternoon temperatures dropped into the 40's and winter blew into Asheville. He quite enjoyed "Hot Lunch Jam." He gave me a funny look but did me the favor of waving his arms around like Mommy as the kids on the TV screen danced in the street to "Fame." Mostly, though, he just played with his doggie ball.

I found myself hoping that one of my children has the passion for performing that I did. Because I want to see what happens when that passion is nurtured instead of tossed aside for Spanish 3 in high school. And tossed aside again for an honors degree in American Studies. And yet again when grad school is a far safer bet for escaping the law firm than continuing to take acting classes at the Studio Theater in D.C. Even the community theater that kept me going during grad school fell by the wayside when I got to St. Louis and discovered that I was a 33-year-old law professor, not an aspiring actress.

Such speculation about the future, it seems, is well beyond The Boy, who lives in the moment. At this moment he is much more interested in unlocking the mystery of toys that have wheels than in considering whether his future lies in the performing arts and, if so, whether his mother will try to live vicariously and inappropriately through him.

The Boy had had enough of Fame before the characters were done with sophomore year. And so, one bath, dinner, and a bedtime later, I returned to Tivo alone. I put on the headphones so I didn't have to worry about waking The Boy when I turned up the volume to match the adrenaline that pumps through me when I hear a song about being a performer, being famous, being someone bigger than my own life. I settled under the baby blue lap duvet and I let myself be 14 again.

The second half of the movie, unfortunately, packs in enough melodrama to cut into good, juicy guilty-pleasure musical numbers. But there were still plenty of moments when I imagined myself dancing with those bodies on screen and being able to carry a tune at the same time.

In those moments, I believed that it is only a matter of time before I find my way into that world. Sure, it's been 27 years since Dana and I sang "Fame" with the fervor of 14-year-old actresses. But I've been busy.

I was prepared for reality to hit when the movie ended. The idea was to spend two short hours camping out in a place where I see the beauty of my teenage life that I couldn't see at the time yet feel the biting truth of how I was far too young and uncertain to follow the passion only someone that young can believe in. Then it would be time to wake up. I am, after all, past 40. The majority of my waking hours belong to The Boy. A good chunk of those remaining belong to activities that help pay for Saturday's belated Thanksgiving turkey. I work at home without even co-workers to perform for. I've given up yoga teaching for a solitary practice in my office. There is no stage in my life for that person I've always wanted to be to act upon.

But as the final scene of Fame played itself out and the students sang and danced and graduated from the School for the Performing Arts, I knew I would write about this feeling. About a swirling sense of joy wrapping around my heart and a youthful burst of someone I still want to be animating me. About not caring if I'm over 40 and devoted to being a mother and in love with my private husband and our private life in Asheville, North Carolina.

I thought about how I still sometimes sit in front of the mirror and answer interview questions -- from Terry Gross usually, sometimes Oprah. I describe the book I've written and speculate on why it's touched such a chord with the reading public. I talk about the remarkable transformation I made in my 40's, when I finally became a writer. And I see in front of me a me liberated.

It feels silly to sing with headphones on. But when you're an actress you don't care. And when no one's home to hear you singing you can be an actress if you want to. So I sang and I got ready to write and I believed. And I still do, at least at this particular moment.

I sing the body electric. I celebrate the me yet to come.

Our First Asheville Snow

2007-11-17T09:42:00.000-08:00

Ah, the first snowfall of the year. That crisp smell in the air as your boots crunch satisfyingly into the grains of ice sliding against each other. Dogs frolic and the yells of red-cheeked children drift over hills made for sledding. At home it is cozy but not too warm to wear a lovely rag sweater, and no one worries about the cost of heating.

Those who have seen my reaction to the first 50-degree day of autumn are sniggering right now. Those who have not experienced my five-month whining spree that is called winter should know: I hate cold weather.

It wasn't always so.

My freshman year at Brown I quickly discarded the bulky knee-length down coat my father bought for me at our trip to the L.L. Bean in Freeport, Maine. We went there en route to Rhode Island as a way of stocking up on the winter essentials a California girl lacked in the days before you could order all that stuff on the internet. A puffy, lavender L.L. Bean knee-length down coat, I quickly realized, marked you either as a weak senior citizen or, just as bad, a weak kid from California whom everyone would tease for being unfamiliar with cold weather. Besides, we were young and stupid and frequently drunk, so we didn't mind a little frostbite now and then.

By senior year, I was so savvy in the ways of winter that my only reaction to the first big snowfall when I was living off-campus and therefore did not have miserable student workers to shovel my front walk was to pull on a second pair of socks to wear with my penny loafers. By the time I made it to campus so many people had cried, "WHAT ARE YOU WEARING ON YOUR FEET?" that I realized I had moved beyond proving my mettle back into winter stupidity. I decided class was less important than heading home in shame and caught the next bus to Boston, where I purchased my still-beloved Timberlands and discovered the joy of warm, dry feet.

After college, I spent two years living in Boston and feeling so abjectly poverty-stricken that the idea of spending $60 on a month-long unlimited pass for the T (the Boston public transport system) sent me into a paroxysm of Ramen noodle dinners and begging my mother for new socks. I decided to forgo the T-pass until the weather forced me to give up my free walk to work so many times that I ended up spending at least $60 a month in T fare anyhow. I never came close. Instead, I braved the frozen tundra of the Boston Common bundled in a long houndstooth wool coat with huge shoulder pads draped over two extra sweaters, long underwear, my trusty Timberlands, red rabbit fur earmuffs, and thick mittens. The first ten minutes of my work day were spent stripping down to normal office wear in a cramped bathroom stall. I don't recall how I handled lunch.

Gradually, I moved to milder winters -- Manhattan, where I vaguely recall feeling the frozen pavement quite plainly through my thin black ankle boots; Washington, D.C., where my body retained so much heat from my early morning workouts on the Stairmaster that I made it to work without any appreciable suffering; Williamsburg, Virginia, home of my too-cool J.Crew barn jacket that swung fetchingly when worn open to the elements with a thin but stylish scarf to provide a modicum of chest covering.

And then I became an old woman.

Rather, my hands took on the persona of an old crone, one of those people whose very touch feels like frozen marble. I became a sort of modified street person, pausing over open vents in the street and searching out indoor sources of heat where I would could rub my hands together muttering with delight.

I had discovered both the bane of my I'm-as-tough-as-you winter posturing and my great excuse for looking pinched and grinch-like when anyone talks about the pleasures of skiing.

I have Reynaud's Syndrome, a condition diagnosed by a cardiologist friend who caught me cursing as I burned my hands on those pocket warmers they sell to hunters and other cold weather enthusiasts. Reynaud's Syndrome is a rheumatological condition that affects about two percent of women -- just enough to prove I'm not crazy. The gist of it is that under certain conditions -- most notably when one's hands get cold -- the blood vessels in one's hands constrict. Which, if you stop to think about it, means that when my hands get cold my hands get even colder. I consider this the physical equivalent of eating more ice cream when you are feeling fat.

How cold do my hands get when they get cold?

Crying because it is necessary to grip the cold steering wheel in order to operate an automobile cold.

Sobbing while running my hands under warm water after walking the dog cold.

Actual nerve damage cold, I discovered after visiting a rheumatologist who used a cool scope to look right through my fingernails.

One way to deal with Reynaud's Syndrome is to take vaso-dilators -- pills that expand your blood vessels, thus counteracting the Reynaud's symptoms and generally making you feel warmer. This solution, I discovered, is less than ideal if you already have low blood pressure and are therefore at risk of fainting dead away when it is lowered further. For a time I took the vaso-dilators anyhow, but the only time I could get away with it was right before getting into bed where it didn't matter if I felt woozy and disoriented.

The ideal solution for Reynauds is to live somewhere without a winter. I did this. The problem is, I did it with someone who likes winter. Further, he likes to point out pesky facts like the insane cost of real estate in Southern California and the alarming health hazard posed by the pollution from the Port of Long Beach. And he takes me to Asheville in the spring and summer when it is lovely and warm and I forget the days when I wandered my house in St. Louis wrapped in my bulky down comforter and skipping dinner because the kitchen was by far the coldest room in the house.

To my credit, I haven't cried once at the prospect of winter this year. By the time I left St. Louis, I spent every morning starting October 1 in a panic over the impending cold. Here in Asheville, I gamely bundle both myself and The Boy in warm layers of modern fabrics so we can accompany Hubby and the hounds on their morning run in the park a couple blocks away. I wear delicious and attractive fleece-lined shoes that I bought at Discount Shoes on Route 191. I even got myself the kind of wool cap that looks cute on 25-year-old hippie-chic chicks and looked cute on me just once, in the store where I bought it.

So I didn't panic the other day when one of the teachers at The Boy's school asked me if I had seen the flurries right before I dropped him off. "Flurries? Really?" I asked, proud that there was no rise in my tone, no catch to my voice.

Two hours later, they called me to tell me he had a temperature of 100.3 and anything over 100 earns him an afternoon at home with Mommy and banishment from school for the next 24 hours. This policy makes perfect sense when it comes to other munchkins sharing their viruses with with my precious bundle. But when I know The Boy is merely teething and those thermometers they use are inaccurate anyhow, it strikes me as a deeply unfair rule.

I noticed a few white grains flying through the air when I crossed the street to the school building. They could have been tiny pieces of styrofoam escaped from someone's moving boxes.

But when I came back outside a few minutes later, The Boy in my arms, I recognized them for what they were. "Look, your first snow," I said with a carefully cheery tone designed to avoid passing judgment on the things in life that The Boy is entitled to judge for himself.

We went to the toy store for the aids I felt were necessary to keep both The Boy and me occupied for the long, school-less, park-less afternoon. We sat on the floor and played with the other children and The Boy ogled the train set that is years too advanced for him, and it felt so holiday-like and cozy that I didn't mind when we walked outside again how much the density of the tiny white stones of ice had increased or how they bit into my face when I headed into them.

The Boy minded, and informed me in no uncertain terms that when you are rearranging straps to get a car seat ready to accommodate a small boy you are not to hold said boy out the open door of the car to be pelted by icy snow.

We did not arrive home to drifts of white on our front steps and a brightly lit living room with hounds curled up by the fireplace. This was not the kind of snow that sticks even if the ground is cold enough. We weren't surrounded by fluffy white flakes you catch on your tongue. In fact, it all felt a bit like standing too close to a shaved ice machine in great need of a tune-up.

Still, it was warm inside, and The Boy quite enjoyed his new set of toys with wheels -- car, truck, and airplane. He wasn't all that interested in the stacking blocks, so I fit them back into their box and put them aside for a Christmas present.

That's the nice thing about having a child who's not yet a year old -- he doesn't care that one of his Christmas presents is nothing more than a recycled snowy afternoon toy.

And that's the nice thing about a snowy afternoon, even one as unpicturesque as this one was -- pair it with a little boy pushing a wooden car across the floor and you can remember the excitement of playing with something new, even the something new that is the first snowfall of the year.

Three Things

2007-11-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

A dear friend -- one of the two of you who read this blog -- mentioned to me recently that every night before she goes to sleep she thinks of three good things that happened that day.

I thought, "That's a really lovely idea."

I thought, "I'd never take the time to do it. In fact, I've been having such a rough few weeks that the very idea of trying to think of three good things every day would either make me slit my wrists or cheat by saying, 'The Boy, The Boy, The Boy.'"

By "rough few weeks" I mean: The Boy got an ear infection and missed nearly a week of school. This means that I missed nearly a week of the opportunity to not have to choose between yoga, a shower, or work during the hopefully two hours of his nap. That weekend, my parents visited and I played tour guide on an average of three hours of sleep a night (see "The Boy got an ear infection") trying to convince them that Asheville is a perfectly wonderful place to live and stressing over my now regrettable choice to prioritize showers and yoga over work. The Boy's ear infection did not respond to Amoxycyllin, so not only were we treated to the illusion that the infection lasted as long as my pregnancy but he ended up on Suprax, which, while apparently tasty, is quite strong and bothers a boy's stomach. As a consequence, he had a really bad week at school. On his one good day, I was desperately trying to get us packed for a weekend in West Virginia at my sister-in-law's house. Lovely as that time was, I failed to bring the power cord for my computer and probably wouldn't have done any work even if I had. On our return home, mother-in-law in tow, exhausted from the effort of trying to act like a person you would want married to a member of your family, I groggily searched for things I could convince myself my mother-in-law really wanted to do while I grabbed a few minutes to work on my laptop in the local bookstore downtown or at the Grove Park Inn, where I paid $12.95 for internet access before realizing I would have to print out those documents that had been emailed to me and was doing nothing more productive than giving myself a migraine and a burning desire to throw my computer in the oversized fireplace near the table where I was working.

So, now that our house is once again empty but for two adults, a 10 1/2 month old, and two hound dogs, now that I have finally completed that work project that was hanging over my head, now that I have taken my second yoga class since moving to Asheville, now that The Boy has started his week with a really excellent day at school, I believe it's time. Three good things.

First, I am a Virgo.

That is not a good thing, at least according to every assessment of the Virgo personality as controlling and critical (a trait I will admit to only because I direct all of my control and criticism at myself). I've rarely thought of myself as a Virgo -- the stay-at-home, quiet type -- and I certainly have lived up to my fantasy of myself as an energetic socializer for some decent periods of my younger days, not all of them even in college. During the four weeks I lived on an ashram outside Boulder, Colorado, training for my yoga teaching certification, I carefully studied an astrology book that explained my non-Virgo-ness. (If you care, on my chart the Sun is just barely in Virgo, while Mercury, Venus, and Mars all reside in Leo in some house that has something to do with public appearances.)

But the truth of the matter is, when you pass 40 and the best thing that can happen in your life is for The Boy to sleep past 6:30 and your partner is your best and pretty much only friend, well, anyone can become a Virgo.

This means that, while I love visitors and travel and being able to look at my calendar filled with notations in different colored pens, I'm really at my best when my days are steady and predictable and end with me lying slack on the couch in front of an episode of The Amazing Race.

Hence, the past month plus has been more of a strain than I like to admit. It has been hard with visitors to us and visits to others trying to fit what I need to get done into an even more compact space of time than my usual four hours between getting home from dropping The Boy off at school and leaving home to pick The Boy up from school. (My sister once pointed out to me that I could save some time by driving him there instead of walking, but, as I believe I have mentioned, I tend to experience some difficulty altering my favored routines.)

It's been even harder trying to be a decent daughter-in-law/sister-in-law/partner/mother when I am suffering anxiety attacks over the work I'm not getting done and then feeling guilty about displaying my crazy side to my in-laws or subjecting Hubby to my crazy side yet again. The one thing I will not do is be crazy in not-a-funny-Mommy way in front of The Boy, which means I am that much more pinched and jumpy with the others from whom I am trying to hide my craziness.

So what exactly, you are asking yourself, is the good thing? And why am I reading this?

The good thing is that I have a family who visits because we want them to and whom we visit because we enjoy it. A family who forgives me for being anxious and crazy, even if I'm loathe to forgive myself.

A family that, unlike being a Virgo, is a good thing.

Second, The Boy. The Boy, The Boy, The Boy. Because even if it is cheating to use him for all three things, it would be a crime to leave him off the list. Even when I held him from 1:00 until 2:30 last night while he was teething and finally let him cry in his crib because I really, really had to pee. Even when he wipes his runny nose on my sleeve and then cries if I try to use a proper item for the job. Even when he holds onto my leg rather than play with all the great things I have put on the kitchen floor for him because it is hard to cut up an apple when you are holding a 20-pound boy in one arm.

The Boy. Because he has the best four-toothed smile I have ever seen and it never fails to make me smile back.

Third, my dreams. Not my dream of "One day I will write a critically acclaimed yet still best-selling novel and be free to spend my days creating stories in my office where I will finally have hung the curtains and found a good rug and which will not be cold all the time despite being over the front porch and therefore not very well insulated."

Not the dreams where you wake up warm and jelly-like and frequently a little bit embarrassed about what you have been dreaming.

The dreams I mean here are my anxiety dreams.

My dreams in times of anxiety follow two patterns. There are the wave dreams. I am trying to swim in the waves and I am terrified and about to drown and out of control. Or I am watching the waves and scared of them because if I were in them I would be terrified and about to drown and out of control. Occasionally, when I am feeling really good about my life, I conquer my fear of the waves and have a lovely swim, but it never seems to last.

And then there are the bus dreams. I clearly remember relating my first bus dream to my friend Joe senior year of college when we both had finished our theses on time and spent pretty much every afternoon for the remainder of our college days at the Grad Center Bar splitting a pitcher of beer, smoking cigarettes (okay, I generally smoked "cigarette"), and listening to Tracy Chapman with tears of angst and determination in our eyes.

In the bus dreams, I am either on a bus and don't know where I'm going or I get off the bus and don't know where I am and everyone I know is still on the bus leaving me further and further behind. It does not take a Ph.D. in psychology to figure out my bus dreams.

As the years have gone by and I have moved further and further away from holding down anything that resembles a real job, the bus has sometimes morphed into an airplane which is going more quickly toward a definite destination but never seems to land. Unless I am late for the plane, usually in my childhood bedroom unable to leave my parents' house. The first type of airplane dream suggests that I feel I am progressing toward my destination in life. The second does not.

The other night, it was a bus again. A school bus, in fact. In Malibu, where I spent my first few years of elementary school. The bus went up a street I didn't recognize and deposited me in a big house I didn't know with a kind of a creepy man whose role in the dream I haven't yet figured out.

But in the house, young and beautiful and nearly forgotten by me, was Roxanne. My first baby. Four-legged, velvet-eared, but no less my baby than The Boy.

When someone is that close to your heart, when they love you fiercely and unconditionally, even if or maybe more so because they are canine, you are very, very lucky. You are lucky even nearly two years after you lose them because you no longer have days when you are so anxious and buried that you don't have time for a cuddle. You are lucky because, even if you know that your partner loves you unconditionally, and your baby as well as a baby knows how to love, you can still remember when she was all you had. So you not only remember how lucky you were to have her, but you are reminded of how very, very, very lucky you are to have all you have now.

Most of all, you are lucky because when you need that kind of love, she is there, in a dream. And she feels as real as she is.

If it takes six weeks of feeling like I just can't keep up any more, like all I can do when I have so much to do is cry, like the days are getting colder and there are fewer people to smile at on the sidewalks -- if that's what it takes to have a few minutes with Roxanne, then that's a good thing too.

Our Appalacian Tour

2007-11-06T13:18:00.000-08:00

Having grown up in Los Angeles, I have long and incuriously harbored the notion that everyone in the United States lives in a big city or in a suburb of a big city or in the sprawl of the less expensive or more regal or sweetly rural-picturesque homes built in the distant reaches of a big city that make you think, "How do these people commute all the way to the city every day?"

It's not an attitude I'm proud of. When I went to college in Providence, Rhode Island, I considered what is a reasonably sized metropolis to be part of Boston based on the fact that I had to go to Boston every time I wanted to do any satisfying clothes shopping. Similarly, I justified my four years in Williamsburg, Virginia, as merely an extension of the previous three I had spent in Washington, D.C., and proved that my new home was nothing more than a far-flung corner of the D.C. Metro Area by stubbornly driving 2 1/2 hours up I-95 to visit friends every weekend. I even harbored a vague sense of St. Louis as a satellite of Chicago, even though in my four years living there I visited Chicago exactly once.

The point is, when you live in a major urban center, you simply can not conceive of life in a small town. You lack the raw materials to even begin to construct a picture of what people do in small towns.

I still don't quite understand where everyone goes to work every day. They can't all work in the Main Street stores that serve both locals and the tourists who choose to spend a quaint weekend at a precious B&B in the area. Surely there are plenty of residents who refuse to work at the Super Wal-Mart on the grounds of politics and self-respect. And with only one teacher to every thirty or so kids, the schools provide a meager margin of employment.

Because I am enough of a liberal to feel bad about my innate sense of superiority, I make a point of trying to learn from the small towns that surround the big town in which I now live. I marvel at the vast array of selections at Discount Shoes, many of them brands for which I used to pay twice as much in the hip corridors of Los Angeles. I wrap myself in the security of Earth Fare and tell myself it's even better than Whole Foods, even if I can't quite allow myself to spring for the six dollar guacamole. I even bow to those hipper, prettier, more urban than myself.

The real test, however, comes when I venture outside of my new comfort zone, my oasis of This-Isn't-the-South-ness that I call home. This weekend, for example, we visited Hubby's Sister and her family in West Virginia.

I'd been to Lewisburg, West Virginia, before, so I was over the shock of how little it resembles what I had come to think of as the vast emptiness of places near nowhere. I had visited the four blocks of downtown that harbor the stores where Hubby's Sister regularly buys me much cooler birthday gifts than I am able to find for her in all of Southern California. I had hidden my jealousy at the home they built, with its plethora of windows and heated floors and its open floor plan. And I had met Hubby's Sister's friends, educated liberals who favor Birkenstocks and wool caps and the common sense to dress comfortably. I was not, in short, expecting any surprises on this trip.

It was The Boy's first time in Lewisburg, and I got to see Hubby's Sister's house through his eyes. Low windowsills to grasp as he proudly shows off his standing skills. Hounds of a nonthreatening size who dash out of the house to chase raccoons with a thrilling thwap of the dog door. New creatures, called cats, who lie in Mommy and Daddy's laps, purring and making them wonder if a feline companion would help them feel this cozy in their own house. The experience of tasting goat, which his parents are unlikely ever to cook, even when it is professionally raised organic farm goat, not the pet that lives in many a West Virginia kitchen.

By the end of our first day there, I was certain that The Boy would vastly prefer growing up within the confines of Hubby's Sister's house to the Asheville home we so proudly purchased just two and a half months ago. After all, I would. It was warmer and better decorated. It had beautiful built-in bookcases with just enough books to feel comfortable but not overwhelming. It had a better kitchen and better bedrooms and better light. I felt like the college student who realizes after a few weeks at home for summer break that no one in their right mind could live in the dorm room in which she has spent the last nine months.

My sense of yawning inferiority increased on Sunday when we visited the Greenbriar Inn.

An enormous white structure with columns reminiscent of the White House, the Greenbriar Inn is a super-exclusive golf resort. We went there to buy a copy of the New York Times (sadly not available by delivery to the residents of Lewisburg, West Virginia, in case I ever gave any real thought to living there, which, I hasten to add, I haven't). We stayed to extend The Boy's nap by pushing him in his stroller about the grounds.

We managed to spend our first hour inside the enormous white structure of the hotel. There was a lobby to gawk at, with twenty-foot painted ceilings and drawling chandeliers. There was room after room of comfortable chairs and chess sets and even a writing table set up with Greenbriar Inn stationery. I wanted to take some, but I knew my cramped handwriting upon its creamy surface would be a crude advertisement of how inadequately I mastered my fourth-grade cursive skills.

Still in that vast building, we wandered an entire mall of stores selling items we couldn't afford and stared at people wearing golf-shirts we wouldn't wear if we could afford them. I munched on a lovely free apple as I checked my email, also for free. We could have purchased a good cup of coffee or even better homemade chocolate to savor with the paper had we so chosen.

Except that we plainly didn't belong. Coiffed head after coiffed head turned to look at our precious boy bundled like a papoose in his stroller, wrapped in my big, curly brown coat, a flannel hat brushing up against his slack, fat cheeks. And humorless face after humorless face looked away without smiling.

Let me repeat. Not a single person in the Greenbriar Inn smiled at The Boy.

The Boy, I may have mentioned before, is a gatherer of smiles, a magnet for praise, the bellwether of my ability to do something right in life. He is, even to one not his own mother, a really cute baby. But not, it seems, to the patrons of the Greenbriar Inn.

Plainly we were not classy enough for the joint.

Chastened, we returned to Hubby's Sister's house to play H-O-R-S-E and eat smoked turkey (another hit with The Boy) and to laugh as he shrieked with delight when his ten-year-old cousin chased him around the living room.

And with each passing moment my vision of my lovely Asheville home became darker, more twisted. Sagebrush-sized mounds of dog hair grew in the corners of the stairs, and rust stains overtook the sinks. Icicles formed on bare feet touching the no longer polished wood floors. I saw our furniture as sagging and small, cowering against the bare walls that cried out for good taste and a few trips to a gallery.

It's no wonder that, for perhaps the first time in my life, I looked forward to visiting some antique stores before heading back home on Monday. Lewisburg, I reasoned, must harbor untold treasures if Hubby's Sister could live there for so many years and create such a superior home to mine.

I still don't like the smell of antique stores -- the dust mote strewn sense of stale carpets and wobbly card tables holding tiny china figurines that weren't cute when they were new and look sad and faded to me now.

But I was able to look with new hope and appreciation at the furniture and even fall in love a little bit with the wardrobe with a big mirror on its front and rotating coat hooks inside that I thought would look perfect in our front hall (because, with all the rooms begging for furniture in our house, the front hallway should be my priority). I called Hubby over to share my appraisal of hutches and chaises and coffee tables.

And then we did it. Together, Hubby and I bought an antique -- a mirror with a frame carved with flowers and a slightly gilded finish. It was, we concluded, perfect for that spot in the entryway sporting three picture hooks on which we had promised we would one day hang a horizontal mirror. At least, I thought with a thrill, people will be impressed by our home when they first step inside.

Six and a half hours and lunch in Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee, later, we pulled up to our home.

It looked nice enough to remind me why we had stopped that August afternoon of house hunting and eagerly called the phone number on the For Sale sign.

The hounds leaping up and down behind the front French doors were happier to see us than the Lewisburg hounds, part of whose charm, after all, lay in the fact that they were not our responsibility when they chewed the blocks being saved for eventual grandchildren.

And even though it turned out that the mirror is too big to fit horizontally, it looks lovely anchored vertically to the wall by the front door. It serves as a reminder that our home is beautiful in its own right, in part because we have the courage to live in a small (sort of) town.

Lilah Gets Arrested

2007-10-31T17:52:00.000-07:00

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.

The Boy Gets Sick

2007-10-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

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.

The Boy Goes to School

2007-10-21T06:11:00.000-07:00

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'm Out There

2007-10-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Natural Livin'

2007-10-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Thar's Food in Them Thar Hills

2007-09-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

The other night Hubby suggested that I might be giving people the wrong impression by calling this blog "A Hill-ish Life."

"You don't find life here hellish, do you?" he asked. I was pleased to note the worry in his voice, an acknowledgment, I believe, that I have made a supreme sacrifice in trading the beaches of sunny So Cal for hills and barbequed pig and, worst of all, winter.

"Of course not," I responded. I thought I'd better not say anything more enthusiastic just in case I might want to throw the I-made-the-supreme-sacrifice-of-moving-to-Asheville-for-you card in his face during a future domestic spat.

But the truth is (and I'm not afraid to commit it to writing because, in all honesty, we rarely have the kinds of domestic spats where we scream things like, "You made me move to this hellish place and I hate you for it!") there is nothing remotely hellish about my life here. Hill-ish, yes. You try pushing an 18-pound stroller with a 21-pound boy to your local Asheville coffee shop. For those whose geography is a little fuzzy, we live in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For those who haven't been to the Blue Ridge Mountains, they are mountains. 'Nuff said.

But hills aside (and they do have their advantages, especially on the two days a year I put a pair of shorts on this 41-year-old body) there are some things about Asheville that not only rock, but that you can't get in Los Angeles. Like Amazing Savings.

My sister-in-law, V., took me on my first foray to Amazing Savings. "I don't want you to get your hopes up," she said nervously on the way there. Apparently she thought someone who comes from the land of Whole Foods and Wild Oats (when there was a distinction) and, even more importantly, Trader Joe's (how I miss you, Trader Joe's) would be disappointed by a shabby old grocery store that sells discounted gourmet organic treats amidst a splendor of grime, dented cans, and fast approaching pull dates.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I was well and truly primed for the Amazing Savings experience. I had been, you see, more than a little cowed by the local, premiere, more-expensive-than-Whole-Foods, all natural grocery store that everyone told me I was going to love. I made visiting it my first order of business on my first day in Asheville. (Okay, my first order of business after feeding The Boy, playing with The Boy, putting The Boy down for his morning nap, and feeding The Boy again.) Hubby was driving two bored and smelly hounds across the country, my brother- and sister-in-law were off doing whatever artists do at art shows, and I was aware from a sad wealth of experience moving to new cities about which I knew next to nothing that a salad bar, fresh sushi, and local organic everything would counter the lava pit of anxiety bubbling just below the surface of my Cool Mama facade.

The soothing interior of Greenlife presented me with a reassuring expanse of curried tofu salads and tahini-eggplant wraps flanked by the greens and reds and yellows of locally grown produce. Clad in my newly purchased 60's-ish shell, The Boy strapped to me in my hip-yet-attractive brown silk sling, I was sure I'd fit right in with Asheville's cool crowd.

As we squeezed our way toward the salad bar, however, I became uncomfortably aware that the lime green and brown design of my dress seemed to violate some tenet of the local dress code that mandated the wearing of nothing more colorful than a faded dark red roughly the color of mud. My hair hung lankly amongst the reaching dreadlocks surrounding us; my manicured toes in their beach-like flip flops withered in embarrassment as a parade of clunky shoes clumped past. Meanwhile, The Boy smiled hopefully at passersby from his perch in the cart and was perplexed when, instead of the usual adoration he garners from strangers, they passed him up for dirty children with long hair and obviously more environmentally concerned parents than his. Tears sprang to my eyes at the unfairness of a world where my child is likely to remain bald until his third or fourth birthday and, thus, unable to grow his hair to an androgynous length, ergo rendering him an outcast in the Asheville toddler community.

The final indignity occurred when the checker looked pointedly at the small pile of groceries that had accumulated on the belt. "Do you need a bag?" she asked, as if she were saying instead, "Have you moved here to pollute our increasingly over-developed mountain idyll, you cursed suburban outsider?"

"I just flew here with an eight-month-old, two suitcases, a stroller, and a really big, awkward car seat," I heard myself pleading. "I didn't have room to pack my canvas grocery bags." Instead, what came out of my mouth was a meek and quavery, "Yes." I managed to check the tears until we were safely in the car.

So imagine my happiness a couple weeks later when, nurtured by the comforting presence of V., I discovered Amazing Savings. The T.J. Maxx of groceries, if you will. Aisle after aisle of treasures that I recognized from the shelves of Whole Foods. Quarts of expeller pressed olive oil for $6.99. Pints of gourmet gelato for $1.49. Organic pink peppercorns and pristine jars of anchovies and the blue potato chips they serve on JetBlue flights. Amazing Savings was a carnival ride of gustatory glee, a carefree outing where I could fill the shelves of my walk-in-closet of a pantry for a mere $45, thumbing my nose at Greenlife all the while. I couldn't wait to return.

And so, last week, I left The Boy with his new sitter, turned up the volume on our soon-to-expire subscription to XM radio (a vestige of Hubby's cross-country hound transport), and set off for my mecca of bargain gourmet grocery shopping.

Amazing Savings, I understood, lies more than a few miles out of town, a fact one tends not to notice when in the welcome company of one's sister-in-law. Alone now, I reminded myself that I've yet to spend more than 20 minutes in the car going from anyplace to anyplace in the Asheville environs. I'm from L.A. What's 20 minutes on the highway?

Quite a lot when you've lived in Asheville for a month, apparently. What happened to the girl who thought nothing of driving 20 minutes to go to her preferred Trader Joe's rather than the one a mere 10 minutes away? What has become of the yoga devotee who, after moving from West Hollywood to Long Beach, still embarked on a once-a-week forty-five minute trek for a sweaty mysore practice with her favorite teacher? Suddenly 20 minutes seemed like an eternity and nothing could explain it but the change in altitude.

Maybe it's a simple matter of driving for 20 minutes through nothing but trees and other green things, as if traveling some great distance through hostile forests to reach the next fortressed castle. On L.A. freeways your best hope of spotting something green comes from the passing landscapers' truck; instead you spend your time watching a dizzying amount of traffic exit and enter the freeway as if to announce that you are passing someplace that others find important and useful. Outside the small footprint that marks the Asheville city limits, it seems, there is little that others -- and therefore I -- find similarly important.

Indeed, when I finally reached the Amazing Savings exit off the interstate, my stomach clenched with a vague fear that I was about to arrive, finally, in The South. With a small stirring of hope, I fell into a long line of cars backed up from the stop sign at the end of the exit. Surely all these people had important places to go -- pedestrian malls dotted with Pinkberry's and sleek yet inoffensive office buildings and Mini dealerships. In fact, it turned out, they were just waiting for a particularly cautious driver in a beat-up white pick-up truck to negotiate a left turn.

I glanced at the clock as I finally made it onto the Amazing Savings road. Twenty-five minutes since I had snuck out of my safe home while The Boy was occupied with the chewed dog bone he is not allowed to put in his mouth (really). A soft, gagging noise spit out of my throat as I imagined him turning around at the sound of the front door closing and erupting in a wail of abandonment that the sitter had been unsuccessfully trying to quell for the length of my journey. The urge to turn around right now was strong, but not quite as strong as my sense of wifely failure at discovering the night before that we had run out of olive oil, anything that grows, and, most egregiously, the corn chips eaten in a hurry at the tail end of The Boy's naps that have become a staple of my diet.

With a jerk of self-approbation and downright terror, I pulled my mind away from my kitchen deficiencies and back to the road. Had I seen that tractor-parts store before? Was the "Do Drop Inn" on the way to Amazing Savings and wouldn't I have stopped to explain to them that they were missing the pun if I had passed it before? I was all alone in the North Carolina countryside in my shiny 2007 CRV and the banjo music from Deliverance was playing in my head even though I've never actually seen the movie. But I hear it's scary.

And then, like a cheap yet effective bevy of angels, it appeared -- the Amazing Savings sign. My elbows puddling in sheer gratitude, I pulled in to the parking lot and ran for the door on shaky legs. I was greeted by the somnolent buzz of bad florescent lighting and the abandoned-looking corner where little progress had been made since my last visit on construction of what appears to be a future, incongruous coffee bar.

As I headed right to begin my aisle-by-aisle foray, I recalled V. warning me off the fruits and vegetables that sat, sad and slightly wrinkled, at one end of the store. They were flanked
by shelves crammed with salad dressings that would have charmed and thrilled me -- Annie's Goddess (only one bottle, but lots of Annie's Thousand Island if that's your thing) and Newman's Own and some I didn't recognize but that had the word "organic" on the label, which is a sure way to get me to buy them. Only V. had warned me off the salad dressing here too with a slightly nauseating story of some she had purchased that had gone bad on the shelf. It had seemed such an insignificant detail at the time. Now it taunted me and my eagerness to come to this shabby poor substitute for my beloved Trader Joe's. How to explain to my friends and family that we are spending more on groceries in Asheville than we did when we lived in glossy West Hollywood?

It got worse before it got better. Sure, there were Terra Chips, three bags for two dollars, but none of the corn chips were made from organic corn, which is the only way I can justify living off of them. I spotted pork-flavored Stove Top stuffing and something called "infusion marinade" that came with a plastic syringe. Next up, chitlins and pigs' feet and boiled peanuts.

But the treasures came, each one just as I reached a crescendo of panic when I realized that The Boy wasn't in my cart but was twenty-five miles away from my needy arms. Organic pumpkin oil and box after box of whole wheat penne and one single pint of Ciao Bella hazelnut gelato. (Actually that turned out to be kind of grainy, like it had melted and then been refrozen, but by the time I discovered this flaw I was home and pleased with my success and didn't care. It's still sitting in the freezer because sometimes I or Hubby have been known to be desperate enough for something sweet late at night to overlook a little grainy-ness.)

I felt immensely proud of myself carting my boxes of booty home. When I unloaded them I would yet again thrill to the pleasure of having plenty of space for everything I had bought and think back to our days of renting attractive yet cramped little duplexes, where space constraints sparked such creativity as storing baby formula in the linen closet and dog food on the washing machine. So I trilled to a friend on my cell phone as I sped past the turn-off to downtown. Oops.

But here's the thing that made the whole day a true triumph of belonging in Asheville, even without clunky shoes (okay, only those three pairs I bought Labor Day weekend) and a dirty child. I simply took a different exit and I drove straight to my home with nary a moment of panic. Maybe I was the only one exiting the interstate at that moment, but that didn't mean there was nothing of importance there. I ended up someplace, and that someplace stretched all the way to Austin Avenue and an arts and crafts house with a big front porch and a smiling boy playing in the living room.

My route home even took my past Greenlife where, I am proud to say, The Boy and I sometimes go to pick up some treats for a Friday night dinner. And we fit right in.

Audrey Catches a Chicken

2007-09-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

When you live in California, there are many things that run through your mind when your new neighbor tells you your dog "got a chicken." Usually it is something like, "Can Audrey really steal those chicken breasts I was defrosting out of the sink?" or, "I've really been meaning to wash that dirty stuffed chicken toy."

But when you have just moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and when the people who come to build you a fence or put on storm windows say things like, "Ah'll bit that hawand o' yers cewd ketch hersef sem chickens," and when your neighbor, R., is standing on your front porch, breathless and slightly wild-eyed, it occurs to you that maybe the chicken in Audrey's mouth is alive.

Or, worse, isn't.

Before I could figure out how one should respond when one's new neighbor of barely two weeks informs one that one's dog has dispatched a neighbor's chicken, R.'s partner, M., dashed up the walk. She leaned forward, hands on knees, like a runner recovering from a particularly spirited 10K. R. and I waited wordlessly to hear the chicken's fate while Audrey slunk guiltily past me and inside the front door, where she plopped down with the heavy regret of someone who has done something she knows is terribly wrong but would do again in heartbeat.

"I yelled at her to drop it, and she did," M. panted approvingly. M. is a lover of dogs and perhaps more forgiving than the chicken's owner might be.

"I was just really worried for her," R. explained, unaccountably more concerned for Audrey than for the chicken. This was good news. Perhaps dogs ate live chickens as a regular matter in Asheville. Perhaps my block was home to a roaming flock of feral chickens and Audrey had done everyone a favor. Maybe they would ask me to have her do regular chicken patrol. "I was driving home and she ran right in front of my car."

"I was working out front, and R. got out of the car going, 'Dog. Chicken." M. smiled, and I felt grateful and helpless. "I knew right away she was talking about Audrey. I saw her wandering around about half an hour ago, but I figured you were close by somewhere. I guess she got into S.J.'s yard."

My brief moment of relief evaporated. This was no roaming feral chicken, but the pet of a soft-spoken neighbor who had stopped by to introduce herself just a few days before.

Worse, for the past half hour, as Audrey stalked her prey, I had been inside playing with The Boy, coaxing him into a nap, blending sweet potatoes for him, all in blissful ignorance of the fact that I had locked the dogs outside without blocking the stairs from the deck to the as-yet-unfenced yard with the disassembled Weber kettle and dented metal trashcan that were supposed to prevent things like Audrey getting out and eating a neighborhood chicken.

"You know," M. continued, as I continued to stare helplessly, rooted to my beautiful new porch as my beautiful eight-month-old baby snoozed upstairs in his very own room. "I'd better go see if the chicken is still alive."

She set off with the confidence and purpose I sorely lacked, having been raised in Los Angeles where most people are unfamiliar with the etiquette that accompanies your dog catching someone else's chicken.

R. turned to me, her skin a shade paler than usual, her eyes bluer and wide with fear. "I just know she's going to wring its neck," she informed me. "She's a country girl."

I hasten to draw attention to this designation. All evidence to the contrary, we do not live in the country. We have moved to a city, where one does not expect to find chickens roaming the streets and only country girls are equipped to deal with the fallout when they do.

"I don't know what to do," I finally admitted, as if stating this obvious fact would prove a corrective.

It didn't. But that was okay because M. reappeared, gently cradling the chicken, now wrapped in her tee-shirt and looking around with a vigor that would suggest she was, at least, not at death's door. The bird was actually quite pretty, with fluffy gold feathers that I could too easily picture against the soft chocolate brown of Audrey's muzzle.

"I don't think S.J.'s home," R. informed me. I wish I could say that at this point I sprang into action, but the truth is I was even more woefully unprepared to deal with this situation than I would have guessed. "Maybe we should call a vet."

Relieved, I watched her pull out her cell phone. Paying for a vet's bill I could do. We had, after all, just paid nearly double what we were quoted to have our furniture delivered (a story for another, less amused, posting). How bad could a veterinary bill be?

Quite bad, according to R., when she told me our only option was the emergency vet that charges $200 when you walk in the door. Asheville, it turns out, is home to two chicken doctors, but neither of them works on Wednesdays.

"I really think she's okay," M. said. The chicken was looking around with a fairly calm expression. On the other hand, I'm not really sure what expression a panicked chicken would wear. I'm not even sure chickens have expressions. "Do you have any moving boxes? We could put her in one and leave her by S.J's front door."

Moving boxes I had. With the glee of a useless person who finally has a job to do, I rushed into the room that will one day be Hubby's office (Hubby's office! My office! We have a real house with lots of rooms!), dumped some books out of a box, and lined it with an old pink towel. Ironically, we bought that towel at the Target in Lancaster, half an hour before we bought Audrey. She slept on it during her housebreaking period when we relegated her to the kitchen during the night. Perhaps she was now wreaking her revenge.

Back on the front porch, I proffered the box and watched as M. lowered the chicken into it. "I'll bring her over to S.J.'s," R. volunteered.

One may note that I had not, at this point, touched the chicken or anything touching it. It's not that I'm afraid of chickens. I'm just not used to seeing them on my front porch. Not that I've ever had a front porch before. Still, even when imagining the front porch I would one day have, my fantasies involved rocking chairs and porch swings and a hound or two, not chickens. Hubby, who has longed for a front porch far longer than I, no doubt concurs that one does not expect an injured chicken in a box to be part of the picture.

"I'm going to write S.J. a note," I declared. Here is something I know how to do. I know how to take responsibility for property damage and how to commit one's responsibility and remorse to writing. I know this not only from three years of otherwise shockingly pointless training at Columbia Law School, but as a human being who was truly, truly sorry that my dog had, at the very least, traumatized S.J.'s chicken.

As I scrawled words of apology and promises to pay for vet bills or, if need be, a new chicken, I saw that S.J. had joined R. across the street. Fine. Good. I deserved to fess up to the sins of my hound in person. I was prepared to be contrite.

I crossed the street waving the note and yelling that I was sorry, so sorry. S.J. stroked the chicken as she sized me up. "It's okay," she said quietly. "It's what dogs do. If these chickens were fatter they couldn't of got through the fence."

So at least Audrey hadn't gone hunting in S.J.'s fenced yard. At least the chickens were hanging out in front of the house, casting the scent of dinner and a few stray feathers into the breeze. A bloodhound could hardly be expected to ignore that.

"I'm not supposed to have them anyway," S.J. confessed. I am pausing here to consider highlighting that sentence. People who live in the city limits of Asheville are not supposed to have chickens. This fact seems to be of immense importance to every member of my family to whom I have related this story.

Just as I was feeling better, S.J. added, "I wonder what scared them out of the yard." I couldn't read her look. It was no secret that the logical cause of the scare would be Audrey. But that possibility somehow rendered her more guilty and me a worse neighbor for letting my preoccupation with my baby create this mess. (Said baby, by the way, was now awake and perched on my hip taking in the commotion with great interest. In case you think I'm an even worse mother than I am a neighbor and would leave my sleeping baby alone as I wandered across the street to offer mea culpas to my illicit-chicken-raising neighbor.)

"Please let me know if I can pay for vet bills or anything," I repeated, since there was really nothing else I could say. Somehow I suspected she would not take me up on my offer, which left me feeling worse, as if making the payment could wipe out my error, a Catholic confession for Jewish owners of chicken-hunting dogs.

"I'll just see if she's okay in the morning," S.J. said matter-of-factly. "If she's not, I'll fry her up."

This plain lack of sentiment lifted the slick wash of nausea I had been experiencing for the past hour and allowed me to even look forward to telling Hubby about the excitement when he got home from work.

He leaned back in one of our porch chairs, drink in one hand, The Boy in the other, and on his face I read extreme pride that he found himself a homeowner in this neighborhood of hounds and chickens and homes with front porches where you can sit with a drink after work.

From next door, M. waved. "Thanks for helping with the chicken!" Hubby greeted her.

"Oh, you didn't hear the best part," M. informed us. "I went into S.J.'s yard with her so she could show me how to put the chickens back in the coop if they ever get out again, and there was a rat in the coop."

"Ergh!" Hubby and I both exclaimed like the city folk we are.

"It was trying to get out, but its hind legs were caught and it was scrambling and going 'eeeech, eeeech!'" M. gave us an impressive imitation of a rat with its hind legs caught in chicken wire.

Hubby and I leaned over the porch, a rapt and slightly disgusted audience.

M. smiled and reeled us in. "I was like, 'oh,'" -- expression of similar disgust -- " and S.J. just said, 'Well we can't have that,' and picked up a two-by-four and just brained it."

"Aaaah," Hubby and I gasped in collective delight at the beauty of this horrible image. M. showed us how she had hidden her face as S.J. gave the rat its send-off, proving that she is not much of a country girl after all and probably wouldn't have wrung that chicken's neck had the situation warranted it. S.J., on the other hand, surely wasn't kidding when she said she would fry up the chicken if she didn't recover.

I ran into S.J. the other day, both of us taking a walk at the far end of the block. A middle-aged couple from New York, a thin young mother from Nantucket, at least one artist, and an Audi TT separated us from the chicken coop.

"How's the chicken?" I asked, expecting to hear either of a full recovery or a mighty tasty meal.

"Not so good," S.J. said with more honesty than I would have liked. "She can't stand up."

"I'm so sorry," I breathed in disappointment and genuine sadness. I could have made the vet bill offer again, but apparently people who own chickens understand that there is some fundamental difference between them and the kinds of pets you would take to a vet. Which perhaps explains why chicken doctors in Asheville have Wednesdays off.

"I'm not supposed to have them," S.J. sighed. Which, I guess, is the moral of the story. And an apt summary of what it is like to live on our block, where you can just see Asheville turning into a place where a family from Long Beach can fit right in.