thegaymom

Tikkun Olam, or My Life in the Theatre

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 18:54:00 +0000

Delivered at B’nai Yehuda Beth Shalom, Yom Kippur 2008

By Carrie L. Kaufman

I have spent the better part of my adult life in dark rooms. Occasionally in the spotlight. But mostly sitting, watching …sometimes trying not to fall asleep. And usually taking notes.

I’m a journalist by trade, and birth, but I have lived a life in the theatre.

I got into theatre because I wanted to change the world. And it seemed like being in those dark rooms, being on those stages, telling stories, was a better way to do that than working in some stuffy corporate office. And it’s not just because I vowed never to take a job that required me to wear nylons.

Though that cannot be underestimated as a motivating factor.

Theatre has changed the world. It continues to. In small, personal ways, and in large, sweeping ways. It’s transformative, and evolutionary.

For me there are five basic tenets to doing theatre. There are others that come and go, but this is the foundation that every actor builds on.

The first is to always be in the moment. This may sound cliché. Where else would you be? But if you’re on stage, you can’t be thinking about your aunt Mildred who’s in the hospital, you can’t be thinking of the fight you just had with your spouse, you can’t be thinking about your next line, or what’s going to happen later in the scene. You shouldn’t even be THINKING. You just have to be. Present. On stage. And then the next day, you can be present with aunt Mildred.

The corollary to this, and the second tenet, is to always be emotionally available. The work of acting is not done on stage, it’s done inside. Actors spend years looking at themselves, dismantling emotional blocks (sometimes too much), so they can react, with honesty, to whatever is happening in the moment. Actors are the most honest people I know.

The third tenet of acting is to listen. Acting is a misnomer. 90 percent of it is listening. 10 percent re-acting. And when you put them together, it turns out to be incredibly giving; a sort of uber-communication.

The fourth tenet of acting, and theatre in general, is to take risks. We speak of performances in terms of choices. The bolder the choice, the more risks an actor takes, usually the better the performance. This is not easy. Think about speaking in front of, say, a couple of hundred people. Now, imagine having to remember your most painful memory in front of those hundreds of people. Not telling them. Just opening yourself up, showing them the emotion, the vulnerability.

It’s pretty risky.

But this is what supposedly comic actors John Candy and Robin Williams did; this is what Amy Schumer and countless others still do. They showed us this depth of vulnerability, while taking unbelievable risks to make us laugh.

This is why theatre is an ensemble craft. It’s about working together and supporting each other and making it safe to take those risks.

The fifth, and I think the most important tenet in theatre comes from Improv. It’s the theory of “Yes…and…” You come into a scene and you have to agree with the given circumstances of the scene AND THEN say or do something to move it forward. So, you walk on stage and your scene partner says, “Hey Charlie, was that you I saw up in a tree last night?” First, you have to agree that your name is Charlie. Then you have to agree that you were hanging from a tree. So you say, “Yes…I was looking for my daughter. She snuck out last night—with you.”

Suddenly, you have a scene. If you said “no” then nothing would happen, and nobody wants to sit and watch nothing happen.

If you think about it, working to always be in the moment, always be emotionally available, always listening, always taking risks and supporting others in their risk-taking, and especially, always walking in to situations, finding agreement and then contributing something to move things forward…is a prescription for making the world a better place.

During the Holocaust, in almost every concentration camp, prisoners performed music or theatre together. Some of them were commanded to, for the entertainment of the Germans. But there was not a concentration camp that I could find that did not have some sort of legacy of theatre or music by prisoners for prisoners. They did this at enormous risk, both emotionally and physically. Did that theatre change the world? For them, we can only assume it changed it for that moment, gave them a reason to keep going. For me, standing here right now, it’s pretty moving.

The playwright Vaclav Havel was sent to prison in the late 1960s, for writing plays. Plays. Plays about losing one’s identity in a totalitarian state; about how language can be misused to obscure meaning and progress. His scripts were banned, but people still performed them, in living rooms all over Communist Europe. His ideas had such an influence that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, people looked to him to lead Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, and he was elected the Czech Republic’s first president.

Even something as seemingly innocuous as South Pacific transformed the world. I think South Pacific transformed the world a lot, actually. People walked out in the middle of the show on opening night. Because five years after the end of World War II, five years after we let Japanese Americans out of prison camps in our country, Oscar Hammerstein had the temerity to tell audiences that “you have to be taught to hate and fear.”

Did this make people rush out into the street and demand civil rights for all? Of course not. But the play was so wildly popular that the message became part of the Collective Unconscious for the generation who did grow up to demand civil rights for all.

“It has to be drummed in your dear, little ear.”

It’s not lost of me that most of these people were Jewish.

You know, about seven or eight years ago now, Steppenwolf put out a press release about a fund they were administering to cultivate more Jewish playwrights, more Jewish voices in theatre. I responded with a tongue in cheek editorial that called for a fund to encourage more white men to enter politics.
Rodgers and Hammerstsein. Arthur Miller. Clifford Odets. Irving Berlin. Jerome Kern. The Gershwins. Stephen Sondheim. Leonard Bernstein. Kurt Weill. Neil Simon. David Mamet. Harold Pinter. Mel Brooks.

This is just a smattering.

The people who started Hollywood: Samuel Goldwyn. Louis B. Mayer. The Warner brothers.
The acting teachers who taught that first generation of actors how to “be” on stage. Stella Adler. Lee Strasberg. Uta Hagen. Sanford Meisner.

They all had one thing in common. They were all really proud of Sandy Koufax.

So, on this day I ask—actually, I’m so relentlessly introspective I tend to check in with these questions pretty regularly...

Have I been present, truly present, in every moment of my life?
Have I been emotionally available? Have I been honest, or have I blocked things out?
Have I listened? Really listened? Not just with my ears?
Have I risked? And supported others in their risk taking?

And, most importantly, have I met people or walked into situations, affirmed them, and then added something to move things forward?

Because that is the essence of Tikkun Olam. That is the essence of being a theatre person. That is the essence, I think, of being a Jew.

You know, when I started living a life in theatre, I walked away from Judaism. It was almost as if I was trading religions. But in the couple of years that I’ve been re-exploring my Jewish identity, I’ve come to realize that I never walked away at all.

So…Shana Tova. And in the coming year I wish you all…a life in the theatre.

Jourdan and the Penguin Necklace

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 17:11:00 +0000

The Project

This is the moment Jourdan stole my heart.

It was the first time I had volunteered in my daughters’ fifth grade class. We had just arrived in Las Vegas about six weeks before. I wasn’t working. And I wanted to make sure the Dixelaney had a smooth transition.

The teacher, who liked to have parents there to help, but didn’t always have stuff for them to do, asked me to help this boy put together his research project on world explorers. I was a little perplexed at first. This project had been due two weeks prior, just before Thanksgiving.

It was kind of a complicated affair, with lots of moving pieces. There was the essay on the chosen explorer, a piece of creative writing, the obligatory map showing the explorer’s routes, a coat of arms, a timeline and various games and puzzles designed, I suppose, to entrench the unit’s terms in the kids’ brains. This was all to be put into a 3-pin folder, in a certain order, with a homemade paper globe hanging from the folder’s edge.

Jourdan was very serious, and very flustered. All of the parts of the rubric were finished, they just needed to be put in the folder. But this was not something he could easily do. It was all so cumbersome to him, and he seemed embarrassed that it didn’t come easier. I thought his earnestness was adorable, and that feeling is what helped me refrain when I saw him pick up a second batch of papers and punch them without lining them up with the first batch. This is something only an editor turned parent can understand. You tell yourself to breathe. It is not the end of the world that the holes won’t line up and the papers will stick out the sides and the top and bottom. Kids have to make their own mistakes.

I checked off the table of contents, chatting amiably with him about his explorer, and whether he liked the project. His little fingers fumbled each paper through the folder’s pins, then added another. When he was done... we realized he had not included the page I was holding, the page that needed to be first. All the papers had to come out and be repinned with fingers that were not used to working on such fine skills.

But this is the glory of mistakes: they give you room to be human with each other. Since I was clearly culpable, Jourdan relaxed a bit, and seemed to let go of his self-consciousness. Our conversation turned to the silly mistakes we make, and how stupid we feel when we do them. Then he started asking me questions about the Dixelaney, and how and why we had moved here. I answered them straight-forwardly, feeling an odd ease, because at that point I hadn’t really come to terms with the fact that I had uprooted my children from the only home they had ever known and taken them back to the city I swore I had left forever. We were making chitchat, and my conversation partner was an earnest 10-year-old boy.

I’m not sure what led to his revelation, but we were talking about the girls and suddenly he said, “I like Dixon.” At first, I thought this was a comment on Delaney, as in “I like Dixon, but not Delaney.” I nodded and said Dixon was pretty cool. No, he said, suddenly becoming discomfited again, “I like like Dixon.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s sweet.”

“Do you think she likes me?”

My daughters tell me everything, and I had never heard of this kid before. I was certain from our interaction that this is not someone Dixon would like like. But I kinda wished he was, because at that moment I thought he was the sweetest boy in the world.

“I don’t know. You should ask her.”

“Don’t tell her I said anything,” he said, now overcome by embarrassment.

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

The Necklace

“Mom, you won’t believe what happened.”

I had met the girls, as usual after school, at the short wall overlooking the playground. It was a Friday, a beautiful Vegas day in January, with a piercing sun hanging low in the sky, and temperatures that felt like spring in Chicago. The kids around us were in a jubilant mood. Delaney was silent, and sad. Dixon was in a huff, full of excitement and chagrin. She was, as their other mother often says, scandalized.

“We were in class practicing for our 5th grade flash mob, and everybody was up jumping around and Delaney had to take off her penguin necklace because it was hitting her in the face, and when we were done the necklace was missing. Everybody started looking for it. Mrs. Lively said that whoever took it better confess, because she knew who it was and he would be in big trouble if he walked out of the room. Nobody said anything. Then the bell rang and we walked out of the room and Mrs. Lively called Jourdan back in. She was really mad. They had a long talk afterward.”

Delaney’s necklace was a crystal penguin, with a wire wrapped around it, hanging from a black, cloth chain. We had purchased it at an art fair in Flossmoor. It was a big deal. I was in between one job that had paid me a whopping $30,000 a year, and was the definition of a hostile work environment, and about to move into another job that was going to pay me a big ole $32,000, and that I hoped would foster a more respectful, artistic atmosphere. (On that, I was completely wrong, but that’s another story.) I was feeling optimistic. These weren’t the most expensive necklaces, but they were something – when we were dealing with a whole lot of nothing. Delaney got a penguin. Dixon got a bear.

But in class that day Jourdan had, apparently, taken the wire off of Delaney’s penguin and stuffed it in his pocket.

My heart sank.

The next day, after much flurry from the 5th grade teachers and the vice-principal, Jourdan gave the pieces of the necklace – broken wire, penguin, cloth chain – back to Delaney. He also included a piece of crystal of his own. To make amends. To give up something he loved.

Delaney could barely look at any of it. It made her sick. Even after the vice-principal took the necklace back and Jourdan’s parents got it fixed, Delaney didn’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s meaning had changed. She hasn’t worn it since.

The Field Trip

We were going to see Nancy Drew at the high school down the street from my parent’s house, where we were living. I got on the bus and sat with Dixon. At some point, I noticed Jourdan, sitting alone, forlorn, stealing furtive glances at other kids who were talking and laughing.

It reminded me of a time on the bus when I was in 4th grade. Vegas was less built up then, and many of our stops were in front of houses standing alone in the desert. One morning, leaning against the window in my seat, I saw Jason standing there alone. His long face (John Kerry has always reminded me of him) seemed sad and angry. No, not angry. More like resigned. Perhaps somewhere in between. It occurred to me at that moment that Jason didn’t have the easy life that I had. I didn’t know much about him, or his parents, but the picture of him slumping at the bus stop, eyes inverted into something I couldn’t fully see, has never left me.

One day, I was home from college and the TV news was on. They reported that two people driving recklessly on a motorcycle were killed. When they said Jason’s full name, I looked up. “Didn’t you know someone in school by that name?” my mom asked. I nodded, feeling at that moment, the cool of the glass on my forehead as the bus pulled up to Jason’s house some 10 years before.

And now I was looking at the same face in this kid who liked liked one of my daughters and stole the necklace of the other, and who desperately wanted someone to talk to him.

Outside the school, as we were waiting to get in, he tried engaging in conversations. Kids literally turned their backs on him.

My heart was breaking.

The show was good, the kids were excited, and I brought up the rear to make sure no one was left behind. The first empty seat I saw on the crowded bus was next to Jourdan. I took it. He took one look at me and turned toward the window.

“I’m gonna make you talk to me,” I said.

He looked up at me. I smiled.

“You seem pretty unhappy.”

He shrugged.

“No one seems to want to talk to you.”

“They’re all mad at me.”

“What for.”

Those black eyes looked up at me with surprise and hurt, as if he sensed I was trying to trick him.

“Ah, yes, the necklace.”

There was silence.

“I don’t know what made you take the necklace. But we all realized when you gave it back, and gave Delaney your crystal, that you really felt bad about taking it. Dixon gave you your crystal back, right?”

He nodded.

“You know, people make mistakes, Jourdan. And then they get forgiveness.”

This wasn’t actually the truth. Dixon had forgiven him because I had asked her to. Delaney couldn’t. But Jourdan didn’t need to know that.

With those words, the torrent came.

“I don’t know what made me take it. I really wish I hadn’t. I feel horrible. I think Delaney’s a great girl. I would never do anything to hurt her. And now nobody will talk to me. It’s like I’m invisible. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. But nobody knows me. Nobody knows the real me. If they saw me boxing, they’d like me, ‘cause I’m good at boxing. I’m good at a lot of things. I’m a nice kid. But they don’t know that because nobody ever talks to me. Except Dixon.”

That’s why he liked liked her. She was nice to him. Dixon is nice.

He went on for a long time. And I talked to him for a long time about how he was in a tough place, and that maybe being open about it and saying, “Hey, I screwed up, I’m sorry, please forgive me,” might get him somewhere. At the very least, I said, he should apologize to Delaney.

He talked a bit about his mom, whom he said thought everything was OK and didn’t listen to him when he told her how horrible things were at school. We talked about fitting in. I didn’t confess that I never fit in when I was his age. This wasn’t about me. Or if it was, he didn’t need to know that.

We talked the entire way back to school. And as we pulled into the parking lot, he looked up and thanked me for listening to him. I told him I enjoyed it, then I hightailed it over to Delaney and told her if Jourdan apologizes, be gracious. She snarled at me, but I knew the message got through.

A couple of days later, I made the girls a deal. They could quit a program I had forced them to do, but that didn’t turn out they way we had thought. In exchange, they had to be nice to Jourdan. There was uproar, from both of them.

“This is where you get to learn the art of forgiveness. If you lead the way, people will follow and they’ll be nice to him, too. Just try.”

I think Dixon tried more than Delaney. And I got reports that Jourdan was a bit more accepted. But Dixon told me that her being nice to him just made him like her more, and that kind of creeped her out, so while she was still going to be nice, she wasn’t going to be his friend. I told her fair enough.

I worry for this boy. Is he one of the people who is going to get so angry, he’s going to surpass using his fists and bring a gun to school? Or is he just going to be self-destructive, speeding at 110 miles an hour on a motorcycle on a winding road? Or – the possibility does tantalize – will he figure it out, know that he has a place in this world, and that he can leave his adolescence behind?

The next few years are going to be tough for him, as he heads into jr. high school. And I’m not sure I like the idea of Dixon being part of his fantasies. I want to help this kid, but I’m not sure there’s anything more I can do. But maybe his bus memory will be better than my bus memory. Maybe he’ll remember someone reaching out to him when he was sad and angry, rather than just looking at him, feeling unable to act.

And maybe he will see the glory of his mistake. Perhaps taking the necklace might be the start of a long, deep lesson that will help him to grow into a better man.

Full House and the Discovery of Gay TV

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 19:13:00 +0000

My kids have discovered 1990s TV. Their summer of 2014 can easily be described as the summer of “Friends” and the summer of “Full House.” I’ve been watching them watching these sitcoms with some interest and trepidation. Because, after all, these shows are 15-26 years old, and the basic assumptions about the world were quite different even that short time ago.

I’ve been preparing myself for conversations with my kids about the portrayal of gender roles and sexism. And homophobic jokes. My daughters, though, have learned in their 11 ½ years that their mom can ruin anything they’re watching by pointing out the underlying assumptions. Now, they barely let me in the room when these shows are on – especially “Friends.”

My guess on the latter is that they don’t quite understand everything that’s going on. I just walked by during the scene in which Ross discovers his red sweater – the MacGuffin that reveals him to be the father of Rachel’s baby. I asked the girls what the sweater meant, and why Monica, Phoebe and Joey reacted as they did. The girls looked at each other, and then at me, and said, “We honestly don’t know.” They missed the MacGuffin. They know how babies are born, but missed the subtle line that someone had stayed overnight about a month before and had left the sweater. I was relieved at this. But a bit disappointed that they had missed such an obvious piece of symbolism. I mean, aren’t they supposed to be studying this in Common Core?

“Full House” tonight was another story. Bob Saget’s character, Danny, had been dating... I don’t know who, because I confess I had never watched the show when it was originally on, and had no interest in going back and watching the episode again. But it was late in the series, sometime in ’94 or ’95, and Danny, the father of the girls in the show, who had rarely dated anybody the first few seasons, finally got a love interest. In this episode, he discovered that his girlfriend was seven months older than him. This bothered him.

In the scene I caught, set in the kitchen, Danny was struggling, in his nice guy way, with his feelings of emasculation at dating an older woman. He said he had grown up with the idea that men were supposed to be older and taller and stronger than women. The joke in the scene was that he was absent-mindedly trying to open a jar of spaghetti sauce as he said his lines, then slammed the jar on the table to emphasize his impotence. And, of course, his girlfriend, soothed him verbally while absent-mindedly picking up the jar and twisting it open. Then she had to put the jar down, and go to him, pleadingly, assuring him that nothing was different, that she’s always been seven months older than him and nothing had changed between them.

At that moment I spoke, which was probably not the smartest thing in the world, as my daughters then became aware of my presence, and intuited the dangerous didactic situation they had just found themselves in. Shit. We’ve been ambushed. Mom’s going to talk to us about the “serious stuff” in this scene. And we were innocently sitting here!

“Mom! Don’t say anything.”

I walked away.

When they were younger, what I talked about mostly was how badly the shows they watched were written. But it was mostly Disney. Kind of easy pickings. I also have pointed out shows and movies I thought were written well. “Wizards of Waverly Place” was kind of a stupid show, but the writers ended up doing a good job of adhering to the given circumstances of the world in which they created. Creating a world, and then breaking your own rules – not on purpose – is a huge writing pet peeve of mine. I told that to my children. Perhaps before they knew what the word “peeve” meant. But I knew they’d understand.

I also am a big fan of the movie “Lemonade Mouth.” It is – as I tell the Dixelaney every time we watch it – the first kids’ movie in which the girls don’t compromise themselves to please the boys. There’s actually a line in which one of the main characters, having learned something already on the journey the story has taken her on, says to her ex-boyfriend that she’ll consider being friends if he respects her and her music, if he puts her first. He’s desperate, and promises her that he’s learned his lesson. This is not used to set up a joke, or an evil plot twist. The girls in this movie are strong and smart and talented. They drive the plot. This pleases me so much, I’m more than willing to overlook the fact that they can just pick up instruments and knock out a well-rehearsed piece when they had never even met each other before that scene. Implausibility is another thing that drives me crazy in writing. But hell, we watched “Glee.”

Here’s the thing about what my kids are watching now: they’re actually good shows. I had known this about “Friends,” which I had watched a bit in the ‘90s. It’s very well-written, and the ensemble acting is pretty wonderful. (Did you know that before the second season, the entire cast negotiated with the network together, and David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston actually took a pay cut so all six of them could make the same salary?) The thing I worry about with “Friends,” are all the sexual innuendos. But as long as someone isn’t kissing, my girls seem to be OK with it right now.

“Full House” – now that’s the surprise. It is beloved among people who were young from 1988 to 1995 – a favorite memory of childhood. I’d never been fully aware of the show until this summer. It truly only entered my consciousness around 2009, when my kids started watching the Olsen twin movies. Thank god for IMDB.

But as I surreptitiously watch it standing behind my children, I have come to realize that this show did a great deal to move along the idea of gender equality, and to set us up for the explosion of gay characters to come in the mid-late ’90s.

“Full House” is a show about three men raising kids. Two of the men are brothers-in-law – sharing the memory of a dead sister and wife. The third is the widower’s best friend.

What I find fascinating about this is that only the brother-in-law (John Stamos’ character) spends any time dating women. In most of the series he has a steady girlfriend. The other two rarely date. According to the series rundown on IMDB, Danny only starts dating seriously in season five. Stamos’ character is the wild card, the crazy uncle who usually does the wrong thing, while Danny and Joey are the steady parental figures, worried about cleaning and cooking and teaching the kids good lessons. Yes, Joey’s kind of a dope – the “dumb blond” character. And yes, there are a lot of opportunities for cheap laughs as one of them comes out of the kitchen wearing an apron, or doing some sort of chore normally ascribed to the wife. But, seeing this late 20^th century show through the lens of the early 21^st century, I find a portrayal of the normality of a family of men raising children. “Full House” was the 1990s answer to the 1980s sitcom, “Kate and Allie.” Networks could show same sex couples raising kids, as long as they didn’t acknowledge that they were same sex couples raising kids. And a whole generation of people grew up not quite realizing what they were seeing.

I don’t know how much the Dixelaney consciously understand what they’re seeing. At this point, though, I’m very much aware that they don’t want me to interpret. Perhaps it’s time to step back and shut up. They’re smart. And they’ve been exposed to a lot of ideas in their 11½ years that will need time to gel. So far, neither of them have given the slightest indication that they are putting themselves away in order to fit in and be liked. So far, all of their friends have been pretty strong. The next few years are going to be treacherous, but our storyline dictates that it’s time to start letting them learn more without me. These are the given circumstances of our world. I do take solace, though, in the fact that every time they turn on one of their favorite shows, they hear the words, “I’ll be there for you.”

OCD and the Girl at Starbucks

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 05:02:00 +0000

The woman in line in front of me at Starbucks was intriguing, though it wasn’t in a pleasant way. She was stocky, with blond hair and a square, pockmarked face. She could have been 30. She could have been 50. She had an air of sanctimony, a knowledge that she was so much smarter than everybody else. What I found interesting, and a bit distressing, is that she seemed to lean in too close to the barista behind the counter. It seemed too intimate. Strangely, it felt as if she was invading my space, even though I was about five feet behind her. Then she practically threw her refill cup at the girl, and I thought, “How rude.”

After the kid (’cause I am of an age where I refer to people in their 20s as kids) came back with her coffee and rang her up, I noticed two things one right after another. First, the barista was either shaking something in her hand or had put it up to her mouth. Then the woman said, “Oh you’re the one who—“ I didn’t hear the last part. But it made the kid behind he counter very nervous. I looked at her and realized that this kid couldn’t stop fidgeting, couldn’t stop moving. She gave a nervous laugh and said to the woman, a little too loudly, “I’m sorry, I have a problem.”

I wanted to slap the customer.

When I was in college, my mother told me she thought I had Turrets. I was sitting on the couch, reading a book, undoubtedly fidgeting, and undoubtedly making some sort of noise coming from deep in my throat.

I looked at her. “No, mom, I just annoy you.”

It very well could be that I have some mild form of Turrets. Or some sort of OCD. I have quirks. If I touch something with one hand, often I have to also touch it with the other. This applies a lot to air. If I happen to exhale onto one hand or arm, then I have to blow on the other. Just to make it equal.

I believe in equality.

I no longer have problems walking down the street. I can’t actually remember what I did, but it had to do with rhythm. If I got out of rhythm, I would have to shuffle back in to the timing. I’m sure at times I looked totally spastic.

And I do have vocal quirks. But is that because of OCD? Or is it because of chronic sinusitis and asthma? I somehow doubt I would have to clear my throat so much if there wasn’t anything in it. Just sayin’.

I see some of these quirks in my daughter, too. She has recognized that she wipes her face a lot with her hands, then she licks her fingers. It’s rhythmic. She doesn’t realize she’s doing it. I think her other mom pointed it out to her, though, this summer in Florida. She came home with some lotion that my ex had given her to put on her face, which then stopped her from licking her hands. She begged me for more lotion. This is something she wanted to get control of.

Personally, I don’t care. She’s beautiful and funny and smart. And who the hell doesn’t have quirks?

I realize that this could be a problem if you let those quirks stop you, if not blowing on your right hand after you’ve accidentally exhaled onto your left makes you feel off kilter, and all you can think about is that the world won’t be right until you blow on your right hand. Then, of course, you do and you realize you blew too hard, so you have to even it up.

You can see how this can stop people for hours.

Somehow, as I’ve gotten older, I have been able to put mind over matter. Or mind over mind. Or mind over neurosis. My friend Jenny went with me to the grocery store this past Rosh Hashana. She is one of the few people I have confided to that I need to go out the same door I came in. Not always, but in some buildings or houses – hers being one of them. On the way home, as we rounded the bend to her house, she noted that I not only had gone out of the parking lot a different way from which I had entered, but I had also taken a different route back to her house. She was impressed. I laughed and let her in on the fact that as I made the right in the parking lot instead of a left, I realized what I had done and dismissed it.

Honor thy OCD. Then push it the fuck out of the way.

As the girl at Starbucks waited on me, I realized that she was, indeed, unable to be still. She kinda looked like she was bucking and weaving in a boxing match. She took my name, though, and put in my order. She could have OCD. She could be in drug recovery and having methadone jitters. She also had a really great smile and she made me smile with her cheerful attitude. Her body radiated energy – barely harnessed energy that was bursting to get out.

As I was waiting for my drink, the rude lady was sitting at the counter, saying something to the other barista’s about being blunt. She had no nuance. No sense that anyone would need nuance. And she was proud of herself.

The fidgety barista was busy at the other end of the counter, smiling cheerfully. Perhaps I was projecting, but I could feel her hurt. I could feel the sting this woman had inflicted upon her. I knew how brave she was being.

So, I went to my car, and pulled out my notebook and a pencil.

“Please know that you never have to apologize. You are interesting and energetic and that customer was way out of line. You’re not the one with the problem, she is. She’s RUDE.”

As I walked back in, the kid had just finished with another customer and walked into the back room. I waited for her, and when she came out I hailed her and gave her the note, telling her that I was behind the woman who was rude to her and I thought she needed to hear another perspective. She read the note as I stood there awkwardly (I had thought I could hand it to her while she was working and she would read it in private). She then offered her hand and said, “Thank you. I’m Ashley.” I’m Carrie, I answered as I shook her hand. “Wow, Carrie. You just made my day.”

We live in a world with so many expectations, so many “norms” that people are supposed to live up to. I find these norms boring, homogenized. The interesting parts can be found in the quirks. And I firmly believe that the measure of who we are is in how we treat people. I don’t care if Ashley was twisting her left arm around her right cheek to scratch her nose and blink her eyes five times – she was a lot kinder than the customer at the counter will ever be.

Training Bras - Train us for what, exactly?

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 20:46:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, as we were going to bed, my daughters asked me if they should get training bras. They said that their friend pointed out that you can see the outline of their breasts through their shirts, and that they needed to wear a bra. I asked them what they thought of that. They said it made them feel self-conscious.

And so it starts.

I won’t pretend that this exchange didn’t make me angry. I wanted to bat the little bugger who told them that, to ask her what it was she found so objectionable about the budding breasts of a couple of 10-year-olds. Of course, I couldn’t do that, so I asked my 10-year-olds what they thought she found so objectionable.

They didn’t know. Then, suddenly sensing a didactic moment coming on, they tried to slough it off.

“Mom,” said Delaney, “It’s not a big deal.”

Delaney needs to get better at warding off didactic mom moments.

“Y...eah it is,” I drawled, eliciting eye rolls from my children, who wanted nothing more than to cuddle me before they fell asleep.

These are the moments that I wish I was more subtle. The moments when I wish I had learned the art of communicating in a sly and underhanded way – you know, like women are supposed to do. I have always communicated straight on. Like a man. Which is why I scare people. Including, apparently, my daughters.

So, lacking subtlety, I reached for the sledge hammer.

“When you grow breasts, it means you’re starting puberty. And there’s something about girls starting puberty, and coming into their own sexuality, that scares people. And so we try to tell girls that they should be ashamed of themselves. That they should put on a bra or lose weight or not stand out too much.”

OK, I don’t know if I said it as well as that. I’m a much better writer after the fact than I am a speaker in the moment. But I did use the word sexuality. Which did make them cover their faces under their blankets. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.

But I went on.

“If you want training bras, I would be happy to buy them. But I don’t think you need a bra until your breasts are big enough to need to be held in place. When it hurts when you run, you know you need a bra. When they get big enough that you know you can eventually do damage to your breasts or your back and that you need support, you know you need a bra. You don’t need a bra because someone can see the outline of your buds and is uncomfortable with that.

“You are not responsible for anybody else’s comfort level with your body.”

At this point, Delaney started talking about books.

Here’s the thing, I have very large breasts, and I have always hated them. I’ve analyzed this a lot over the years. Part of it is that I grew up in the Twiggy era, when the model of beauty was an negative A cup. Part of it is that I found bras to be the most uncomfortable piece of clothing ever invented. I wanted to just put on my t-shirt and go. But most of it, I think, was the reaction of people around me to the changes in my body. At 10 or 11, I still wanted to run around in fields and play football with the boys at recess. Suddenly, these THINGS started growing and I had to wear this strangling apparatus, while simultaneously coming under tremendous pressure to rein myself in. No more playing in fields. No more wearing boys t-shirts. I was too blunt. I had to be more subtle. Like a girl.

Of course, right after this exchange with my daughters, I felt torn. In trying to advocate for them being comfortable with their own bodies, I think I may have made them feel like they can’t wear a bra or mom will get mad. I don’t want them to have to suffer the comments and stares of other kids because they think I might think less of them for conforming. So I bought them bras. And now they hate to wear them because they’re uncomfortable. And I’ve decided at this point to let them sort through that without my didacticism or my own experience.

High Court to Hear Two Historic Gay Marriage Cases

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:52:00 +0000

Tuesday, March 26 and Wednesday, March 27 are the days that gay marriage supporters have been waiting for, when the Supreme Court takes on the issue of marriage equality in two separate cases. Read the full story on my other blog, Kaufman On America.

Snow: The endless quest

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:56:00 +0000

One of the fondest memories I have is of sledding for the first time with my father, at the age of three or four, on some hill in St. Louis which was probably very small, but which seemed enormous and scary to me. Sitting in my dad’s lap, dressed well against the cold, we rushed down the mountain again and again.

And then we left. Headed west to the desert where the snow falls an inch or two for a few hours every 13 or 14 years. I was not to see snow until I started skiing, as a 12-year-old, heading down real mountains. But by then the fear and caution that accompanies adolescence had crept in. I didn’t want to fall, didn’t want to make a fool of myself. When I skied with my dad (who was also learning himself, in his mid-30s), the abandonment of fun was replaced by a desire to make him proud of me, which hindered my concentration, which made me fall. It was exhilaration mixed with frustration.

My encounter with snow had changed. It had become a skill I needed to master rather than a letting go to the rush.

My quest for snow and cold swept me further east, first to Boston to go to school, then Chicago. I remember one lovely night when I ended up walking from Boston Harbor to Brookline and my rent-controlled apartment in a slowly falling shake of a storm that would yield about 10 inches over a long period of time, the city getting darker and strangely lighter at the same time. I walked along Commonwealth Avenue, pretending I was in a past century, where gas lamps illuminated the glow of the snow and a guy with mutton chops and a top hat would come whisking by me at any minute. What he might say to me, this hunched over dyke in jeans and Gore-Tex, never occurred to me. In my fantasy, I was just another bloke like him.

Chicago has been a disappointment in the snow department. I remember some big storms, and it seemed to snow regularly in the years I first moved here. But I might have been too busy to notice. Plus, it’s flat. Going skiing is an effort. My partner was unequivocally not interested, and I couldn’t justify the expense or step out and go alone. But damn, those discount flyers for Jackson Hole from 15 years ago still sit on my bookcase.

I took my kids sledding when they were three. They hated it. Dixon humored me and kept going down because I was excited. Delaney, who has had issues with motion since she was a baby, simply refused. And now, when it does snow, my hours are filled with shoveling and salting and making sure everything is taken care of and everyone is dressed properly and (if we can convince Delaney) the sleds are packed as we head to the little hill by our house. I am now the caretaker, trying to give my kids the opportunities for exhilaration that I missed in the desert. Opportunities that they seem highly ambivalent about.

In the south suburbs of Chicago, we don’t get as much snow as those people north and west of us. Last year it barely snowed at all. Our sleds stayed put. This year December went by and I’m not even sure it got down to freezing. January had a few cold days, punctuated with even more in the 40s. We tried, mid-February, to eke out a sledding run from the two inches of snow we had gotten. The grass on the hill shown through, like a man in white face paint badly in need of a shave. It was pathetic. But it was all we had.

Finally, a few storms in a row at the end of February piled the snow up a few inches. And then last week, on March 5, eight inches fell and I was outside for most of it. My 10-year-old and I made a snowman, and she taught me how to roll the snow rather than pack it. But our fun was punctuated by me trying to snow blow, which I had to do twice as the snow was coming down that hard. It was pleasure and work, though the work in the snow was pretty pleasureful. Our snowman had a carrot nose and a cantaloupe mouth. Dixon got two of her best buttons for eyes. I found an old favorite hat. And we took some knit gloves that we don’t use anymore and fitted them on stick arms. We spent hours outside, romping in the snow, looking for the proper sticks, rolling, shoveling. Laughing. Then we took a picture.

Because in the end, posterity is all we have.

A week later it is 47 degrees and raining. I just picked up my hat, unhanded the gloves from the sticks, and washed the buttons and put them back in the sewing box. There are clumps of snow dotting my yard, like frozen dumplings on a bed of kale. Spring is here, or coming – either way, there is no more snow for this year. I find my self counting down the months till December, when I can hope again for a snowstorm and cold weather, proof that global warming hasn’t taken hold. My entire life has been a dream of snow. Why I never moved to Denver or Vermont I’ll never know. Perhaps I’ve been trying to recreate that memory of flying down the hill with my dad. Perhaps I will never fully succeed. But dammit, I’m looking at those Jackson Hole flyers and wondering if they will still be good in a year.

Are homophobes really assholes?

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:43:00 +0000

Hey, GayMom followers. I've got a new blog where I'm posting stuff that's not so personal and more political in nature. Today's post straddles both - looking at what homophobia really is and why we shouldn't call homophobes assholes.

Go take a look at KaufmanOnAmerica. And subscribe to that if you're interested in reading more.

Thanks,
Carrie

Why Uma Left

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:32:00 +0000

Well, it finally happened. A clear-eyed understanding of their pain and anger and confusion about their other mother moving to Florida. And it was so simple and straight forward. I guess memorable moments aren’t always dramatic.

It started with a post on Facebook about an anguished father, raising money so he can fight for custody of his son.

The girls were looking over my shoulder and made me click on the link. It’s a sad story. He was the primary caregiver for six years. Then he and his partner broke up, and the ex moved across country with his son. The ex is the biological parent. Actually, that part’s not clear. What’s clear is that the man raising money is not the biological parent. He was just the stay at home dad for six years.

Part of the argument in the fundraising plea is that studies have shown children are better off with two parents raising them. When we got to that part, I thought, “Uh-oh.”

But I didn’t say that. Instead I took the political route.

“This is why gay marriage needs to be legal all over the country. Gay people can’t adopt in every state, and so sometimes when they split up one parent has no rights to see his child. If they were straight, then legally both parents – whether biological or adopted – would have a right to see their children.”

They nodded. Silently. They didn’t want to go down the political route.

“And I think it’s horribly unfair when gay people hide behind the lack of law in divorce cases.”

They nodded again. I relented and took a more direct route.

“By the way, that is not what happened with Uma.”

“But she moved to Florida,” Dixon said.

“Yes, but I would be perfectly happy if—“

“You want to get rid of us,” Delaney said, clearly joking, and slapping her hand over my mouth.

“No,” I tried to stammer out, “I would be happy if...”

“You want to get rid of us,” she said again, laughing.

I garbled out another answer, then playfully tried to bite her hand.

This comes from another discussion we had a few days earlier. I have spent the summer at home and have consequently spent almost every waking moment with the girls. Since we are most definitely nocturnal beings, their hours have gotten later and later, especially since Olympic coverage ended at 11 most nights. They told me the other day that I’ve been way too short tempered for the last week or two. I answered that they’re lucky my temper held out this long and that I needed a break. So Delaney took it to its most likely extreme.

“Seriously,” I said when she took her hand away from my mouth. “I would be very happy if Uma lived near here and picked you up on Sunday and had you till Tuesday night or you would come home on Wednesday after school. I would be happy to have you see her every other weekend like you used to.”

I got up to empty the dishwasher. This seemed like a good time in the scene to put some space in the blocking.

“If you and Uma had stayed together,” said Dixon, “would we all have moved to Florida?”

“If Uma and I had stayed together, we would all probably still be living here.”

“But she moved to Florida for a reason.”

“But if we were together, staying with us would have trumped the reason she moved to Florida.”

“Then why did she move?”

I paused, put away some dishes.

“She moved to Florida because being near the ocean is healing to her. She’s happy there. For some reason she could not be happy living near us. And she was not happy living with Coco (her grown daughter who lives an hour and a half away). When she told me she was moving, I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew it was the best thing for her.”

I looked at them.

“The problem is, it’s not the best thing for you.”

There was a silence. Delaney was standing at the table browsing on my computer. Dixon’s crumpled face showed the computations going on in her head.

“Why is the beach more important to Uma than her children?”

There comes a time when raising kids when you can’t fix the hurt. You just have to let them feel it. And you have to affirm the pain, affirm the validity of their feelings, without taking them away.

The reality is that their Uma loves them very much, misses them horribly, and is tortured by the idea of having a half life with them. It’s much easier for her to be away than to only see them – and me – part of the time. She stuck close longer than I thought she would. And the other day she asked if I could look for employment in the south, so she would be within a day’s drive. But if she’s going to be tortured without us, she needs to be a in a place that makes her feel alive and whole.

I understand that. And I understand that for my children, it’s wholly unfair.

We stood in the kitchen for a while in silence, me putting dishes away, Dixon staring somewhere in the vicinity of the floor, till Delaney broke the spell.

“Can I take a cooking class?”

Dixon and I laughed, and I teased her about the non-sequitur.

“Hey, I don’t hit things head on,” she said. “I go around them.”

I’m still pondering how to handle that one.

Brave: Pixar’s Cowardly Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 21:06:00 +0000

According to my American Heritage Dictionary, “Brave” is defined as:

Possessing or displaying courage; valiant
Making a fine display; impressive or showy
Excellent; great
To undergo or face courageously

I have told my daughters many times that bravery is being afraid, but doing it anyway.

Here’s what “Brave” isn’t: being a petulant teenager who almost ends your mother’s life because you’re being forced to do something you don’t want to do.

Granted, the stakes for Merida – the hero in Disney Pixar’s new movie “Brave” – are higher than being allowed to stay out after curfew or wear torn jeans. Merida’s mother, the queen, sticks steadfastly to social norms and traditions. From the beginning of the film, she is constantly telling her daughter what “ladies” don’t do., presenting herself as the very model of “ladylike” behavior.

Merida is portrayed as an extraordinarily gifted tomboy who can scale rocks as tall as buildings in a single bound, shoot arrows with pinpoint accuracy while riding a horse at high speed, and fight like...well...a boy – at least how boys are defined in her mother’s world.

Which is why it’s scary and appalling when the queen tells Merida she must marry – and presents her with suitors who don’t begin to match Merida’s fearlessness and skill.

I, too, would balk at having to put myself away to please and be subservient to a husband. I, too, would fight what Merida labels as “becoming my mother” – or, rather, adhering to limited views of what women are or can be embodied in my mother’s generation.

In fact, I did balk at that. Thirty years ago. And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with the movie “Brave.” It makes epic promises about Pixar’s first female heroine who must save her country, evoking thoughts of “Braveheart” or “Star Wars” or even “Norma Rae.” What we got instead was “Mary Tyler Moore” – a story that would have been groundbreaking at a time when women couldn’t open checking accounts on their own, that now seems backwards in its view of women and the roadblocks women and girls must overcome.

The smallness of the story is what bothers me. Luke Skywalker is a boy from a remote, tiny village who doesn’t realize the power he has, but who finds himself fighting to save the universe. Erin Brockovich is a woman who doesn’t realize how smart she is, but ends up almost single-handedly triumphing over corporate cruelty and greed. Gandhi is a man who finds power in stillness, and ends up taking down a nation.

Merida is a girl who is trying to get her mother to be less uptight.

What makes it more egregious is that Merida’s “bravery” is really displayed as petulance. And her mother – who has dedicated her life to constricting herself by what she is supposed to do – comes off as wise.

Because, you know, only petulant, self-centered girls forge their own paths in life.

I can’t help thinking that if the main character in “Brave” had been a boy, his prodigious skill would have been enlisted to save his country. Or he would have struck out on his own, leaving expectations behind, stumbling into and foiling a plot that would have destroyed the kingdom. He would have been asked to shoulder responsibilities beyond his years – to be afraid, but to do it anyway.

For Merida, the roadblocks she has to overcome are of her own making, and they’re made with a rashness that plays into both the stereotype of an hysterical woman and the stereotype of a fiery redhead. The choices she makes are not brave, they are stupid, and the movie is really about how she scrambles to dig herself out of the holes she’s dug.

Because, you know, that’s really all that women can do.

At its heart, “Brave” is a relationship movie, a chick flick. As she tries to solve the problem she’s created, Merida comes to see that her mother really does love her. As her mother watches (and helps) Merida try to solve the problem, she comes to a better understanding of how powerful and fierce her daughter is. And somehow she comes to appreciate it, without seeing that fierceness as a repudiation of her own choices.

I suppose that’s an OK message for middle class America, where so many women still are tempted to mold their daughters based on the limitations of society. But it leaves out so many mothers and daughters for whom this is not the norm.

Wouldn’t it have been better to write a film script without those limitations, to show how truly powerful women and girls can be? Wouldn’t that have been a great message for mothers and daughters to take out of the theatre?

This movie is billed as a movie about bravery. It’s billed as a movie about going out into the world. It’s billed as a movie about saving the kingdom. And I’m afraid that for so many little girls – and misguided mothers who want to limit them – the smallness of scope of “Brave” will only send the message that women really shouldn’t try saving the kingdom – or even running it.

Four years ago, our country almost had a female presidential candidate. It’s very likely we’ll have a female president within the decade. And when we elect her, I’m not going to care how she got along with her mother, or whether she’d be willing to marry a suitor from another kingdom. I’m going to care about whether or not she can save the world – or at least run one country.

Where’s the movie that will inspire little girls to want that?

I put out a call to my Facebook friends to come up with titles of epic movies in which the hero saves something larger than him or herself. What interested me was the range of answers to this question. Following, in the order I received them, are the answers that were posted (some by the same people):

Braveheart

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Pan's Laberinth

Diehard

The Alien Trilogy

A Civil Action

The Marathon Man

The Verdict

12 Angry Men

Erin Brockovich

The Accused

Witness

Lorenzo's Oil

Hurricane

Superman. Spiderman.

All the President's Men

Chinatown

‎Two very different Tom Hanks films: Philadelphia, Saving Private Ryan

Three Days of the Condor

The Insider

Blue Velvet

Gideon's Trumpet — a made for TV movie with Henry Fonda. Clarence Gideon is one of the most unlikely heroes in American history.

Schindler's List

Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae

Star Wars

The Crucible and To Kill a Mockingbird

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Wizard of Oz

Lawrence of Arabia. Bridge on the River Kwai.

First Knight. A Knight's Tale. The Patriot. The Expendables.

The Shawshank Redemption

We Were Soldiers Once. Robin Hood (any version). Excalibur. Master and Commander. Peter Pan. Count of Monte Cristo.

Finding Nemo

The Unforgiven

The Last Starfighter

The Dirty Dozen

The Great Escape

Hunger Games

Gladiator

Motorcycles

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:52:00 +0000

It's funny how your views on things change once you have kids.

I still remember that day, 20 years ago, when I was single and childless and I made my way to Rosemont, Illinois for the annual motorcycle show. It was there that I fell in love - with a black Yamaha Virago. I spent almost the entire day salivating over it

Viragos are sweet bikes. They're built like women - curvy, big-hipped and elegant. And low to the ground. At 5'8" I'm not short, but it's amazing to me how many bikes make me stand on my tippy toes when I hit a red light. I wanted my feet flat on the ground. And my heart to soar. The Virago promised both.

And then I went away and thought, "I can't afford one. I don't deserve one. My mother says I'll die if I get one." And yet...

I had spent at least 10 years by that point riding bicycles long distances. Since moving to Chicago the year before, I frequently spent my Saturdays riding from the northside to Winnetka or Highland Park, then west out to Milwaukee Avenue, which would take me home. I had routes of 30, 40 and 50 miles. It was incredibly exhilarating, and it made my Sundays more relaxing than I think I will ever experience again.

It also made me highly road conscious. I could hear and feel and see every driver in my proximity. I had a sixth sense. I was a road warrior.

So why just use my feet to drive the machine? Why not use a motor?

Ah, the dreaming.

Fast forward a couple of years. I was with my girlfriend of less than a year - who turned out to be the other mother of my children and, now, my ex. We were visiting her family in Iowa. We had seen a motorcycle for sale in front of someone's house. On a whim, we inquired about it. It was tall. My toes didn't like that.

So Connie, who thus far had enthralled me with her lack of restrictions - her lack of a mother's voice telling her she was going to die if she tried something risky - suggested we go to a bike store. It was there that we met her. My love. She was seven years old. And black. And beautiful. I wanted her. I knew she wanted me. And I found myself in this strange euphoria when Connie said, "OK, let's buy it."

You can just DO things like that? Without planning and fretting?

I had that bike for eight years, and I found out two really important things. One, Viragos (at least ones built in 1987) are not very comfortable. I didn't do too many long distance trips. Two, when you live in the city - especially when your office is within a half mile of Wrigley Field - there is no better transportation than a motorcycle. You can park them anywhere. As much as I got off on the exhilaration of flying down the street on a beautiful day, I get off just as much from the beauty of practicality and efficiency. And there is nothing sweeter to me than something that serves multiple - and equally important - functions.

Then I got pregnant. And it occurred to me that they don't sell infant seats for motorcycles.

Really, it was the practicality that got me first. We weren't living in the city anymore, and there was no way my ass was going to survive the 60-mile round-trip commute to my office. The bike would just sit in my garage, unused, while I strapped my twins into the car seats of my new minivan. I supposed I could drive it to Walgreens, or the bagel store as Connie stayed home with the girls, but that seemed rather sad.

So one late fall afternoon, when I was six months pregnant, but not yet on bed rest, Connie and I took my beautiful Virago out for one last ride around our neighborhood streets, before the truck came to take the bike to California, where Connie's son was going to school. It was also a perfect bike for beach towns and college campuses. He would do well with it.

Then came the day when Connie decided to impress our daughters with how cool she thought their mother was. The girls were about three or four, and as the three of them were walking down the street, a motorcycle passed. And she said, "You know, your mother used to have a motorcycle."

When my children burst in the door, their astonishment and joy and excitement and admiration blew me away. Yet the realization that they now knew it was OK to ride a motorcycle made my heart freeze and my stomach drop.

You can die riding those things.

They didn't have the road warrior training that I'd had. If they get a bike when they're 30 and past the teenage anger and compulsiveness, that might be one thing. But knowing, even before you can drive - even before you know how to ride a bike - that motorcycles are something you could imagine in your future. No. Not my children.

No more motorcycle dreams.

As the girls have gotten older and my car ricketier, I now wish I had kept that Virago - or traded it in for something a tad more comfortable. So what if I would only ride it every once in a while - or when my car was in the shop. And my kids are not rash. They listen very carefully about road rules when we ride our bikes around the streets of our town. Teaching them early is the key to safety.

And then I saw the little blurb about the International Motorcycle Show in Rosemont. It's this weekend, and I thought, "I could take the girls." Then I thought, "It's not practical. I can't afford it. And I don't want to put ideas into their heads."

And yet...

That Sinking Feeling (or the effect of grandparents)

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:40:00 +0000

You should always own up to your lies. That's what my grandfather taught me.

Grandparents have special import in our family. My children are named after all four of mine, and when the girls were little my parents gave them each lockets with tiny pictures of the couple whose name (at least in Hebrew) they carry on.

My daughters have also heard stories about my special connection to my mother's dad, who thought that I was the smartest, funniest, boldest little girl he'd ever known. I thought he was the wisest man in the world, despite the fact that he never went to high school. He adored me. And I adored him. He had a tremendous influence on who I am. And my daughters get the benefit of his self-deprecating humor. The Kaufman girls know how to laugh at themselves.

Dixon has his smile or, more accurately, what we used to call his shit-ass grin. My grandfather was wild when he was a kid, and mischievous even when I knew him, but he always told the truth. He couldn't help it. His grin would always give him away. As does Dixon's.

My girls only have one set of grandparents. And the mutual adoration is a bit much to take sometimes. When my folks visit, I tend to stay home and do all the things I've been wanting to get to, while the four of them happily go off and do something. OK, while the four of them happily go off and shop. Because shopping and style are surely the legacies that my children are going to take away from their grandparents.

And that's OK. Dixon has a unique personal style, and has been saying since she was three that she wants to be a fashion designer. She has an acute eye, and I rarely go on a date without asking Dixon how I look.

I do not have a sense of style. I'm a dyke. And I'm stubborn – another legacy of my grandfather. When I was a teenager, my mother took me shopping every Saturday and I figured that if she was going to torture me in this way, I was going to be as miserable as possible just to torture her back.

I learned a lot from those weekly outings, but it was a mix of things. I learned that my mother wanted me to be something I wasn't, and that neither of us really understood at the time who I really was. I also learned to be very sensitive to the criticism my mother gave me about how I looked. That was how she got me to go every weekend. And I've found that when you grow up, the impact of those criticisms doesn't go away.

But I also took away a vague idea about what style is, and a notion that I should try to look good – whatever that meant.

So, when my mother looked at me on my daughters' birthday this December and told me I needed new bras, I immediately knew she was right and that I was doing the world a disservice by walking out my door with saggy breasts in 2-year-old bras. Of course, I was also pissed off. I had just spent the day greeting all of the parents of the 14 people my kids had invited to the bowling party, and my mother picks just before we go out to dinner to tell me that my breasts are touching my knees?

Where are the days when she wouldn't let me out of the house with holes in my jeans!

I immediately got new bras and asked the girls to please let me know when they thought I needed to replace them. Honesty is important in our house, even when it's not always complimentary. Taking yourself too seriously is deadly. It's laughter and truth that make happy people.

This truth thing came up last week with Dixon, who justified getting school hot lunches by telling me that they serve vegetables in every box. I asked her if she actually ate those vegetables. She told me she preferred not to answer that question. In the ensuing discussion I explained to her what the Fifth Amendment was, and that every American had the right to not have to tell if they were guilty of something. She pleaded the Fifth. Of course, I then told her that was just a legal technicality – anytime anyone pleads the Fifth, everybody knows he or she is guilty, they just can't use it in court. She looked at me, and then she said, “Let's talk about homework.”

Just like my grandfather would have done.

This morning it was my turn. My daughters bought cupcakes at the store on Saturday. There were six of them, and they carefully apportioned out who would get which cupcakes – three, of course, for each. But last night I noticed that they had only eaten one apiece. There were four left. And the cupcakes were already 2 ½ days old. They would be getting stale soon. So, in the spirit of the mischievous grin, I ate one, concocting a story I would tell them in the morning about little elves who came in and cleaned up the kitchen and must have helped themselves to the cupcake.

My daughters are 9 and, despite the fact that their favorite TV show is about mermaids, they didn't buy the elf story. Delaney, in particular, was outraged that I had eaten one, mostly because it was in her row. I suggested that the only solution was to sacrifice one of Dixon's to the little elves tonight.

“Mom,” said Delaney, “Tell the truth.”

“And don't take the Fifth,” Dixon chimed in. “We know you're guilty.”

Just as I was figuring out how to answer this, I noticed Delaney looking at me funny.

“Um... that shirt doesn't look good on you.”

“Really?” I said. “Should I change?”

“Tell us the truth and I'll answer you.”

Seriously? She seriously decided to prey upon my blindside for style to get me to fess up to the cupcakes? I was caught between my desire to surreptitiously eat my children's treats and my desire not to walk out of the house with my mother's disapproval ringing in my ears. She had me, and what was worse was the realization that she was completely believable. Dixon might be a designer, but Delaney has the makings of a remarkable actor. Frankly, that scared me more than being caught with the cupcake.

“Yes. I ate it. Happy?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” I paused.

“So how's my shirt?”

I'm thinking now that perhaps my daughters should spend a little less time with their grandparents.

The Jitterbug

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 17:46:00 +0000

One of my earliest and fondest childhood memories was watching my mom and dad do the Jitterbug. They were good. And I was in awe.

I believed that they had won some championship when they were in high school. They were champion Jitterbuggers. This may have been entirely something I just wanted to believe, and even as a young teenager, watching them at my Bat Mitzvah or a cousin’s wedding, I would banish the thought that I should check to make sure this was true.

They were championship Jitterbuggers. They won the Carrie Kaufman Championship. That’s all that counted.

But I wasn’t alone in my awe. People would actually pull back on the dance floor to watch my parents; much, I thought, like people pulled back to watch George Bailey and Mary Hatch doing the Charleston before falling into the pool.

My parents were movie star Jitterbuggers. And it was a wonderful life.

They tried to teach me a few times. It didn’t take. Here’s the thing about dance: it’s incredibly sexist. When two people dance together, one has to be the “boy” and one has to be the “girl.” So when my parents tried to teach my brother and I to Jitterbug, I would inevitably have to be the “girl.” And it’s not that I didn’t really want to be the girl. Well, it’s not totally that I didn’t want to be the girl. It’s that the anchor, the real talent of this Jitterbug team, was my mother. I didn’t have a chance of being that good. It was easier to be the boy. But my parents couldn’t get their imaginations around it. So the nights we tried always ended with me not learning how to Jitterbug.

But I was still in awe.

My children are dancers, and they’re pretty good. They are “serious” and they plan what year they’re going to be on So You Think You Can Dance. This is encouraged by my mother, who may never have been a dance champion, but who wanted to be.

I have seen the feeling I had for my parents’ Jitterbugging in my children’s eyes. But it wasn’t for dance, it was for singing. One of my most cherished memories as a mom is singing to them as they took a bath, and watching them fall completely silent as they stared at me with awe.

I am a champion singer. I’ve won the Dixelaney Championship. That’s all that counts.

My children don’t think I’m a very good dancer. This may have been encouraged by my ex, who always laughed at me when I danced. I suspect the laughter could have been because I dance with abandon, and my ex doesn’t do well with abandon. But I am completely open to the prospect that I may not be a very good dancer.

So my children were wondering the other day how they got to be such good dancers. I’m holding back the information that their sperm donor’s brother is a choreographer. TMI on the sperm donor for now. So I told them that grandma and grandpa were dance champions.

They were in awe.

So last night, when my parents arrived for their week long Dixelaney Birthday and Chanukah visit, the girls asked them to Jitterbug for them.

Let’s stop and do some background here for a second. You may have noticed that I have been writing about my parents’ Jitterbugging days in the past tense. They were great Jitterbuggers. They’re now in their early 70s, and while there are plenty of people in their early 70s who can dance, if not all night, then at least half the night, my parents aren’t them.

My mother, for about 30 years now, has been dealing with a muscle tissue disease in the Lupus family. That’s apparently about as specific as one can get with Lupus. She started off with Raynaud's Syndrome which is still prominent. My father jokes that she’s an All-American: her fingers start out white, turn red and then turn blue. I worry about her when she comes up during December. It’s cold in Chicago. It’s not cold in Las Vegas, where they live and where I grew up. But their granddaughters are here. And their granddaughters were born just days before Christmas. My mother hasn’t missed a birthday yet. Blue fingers be damned.

But it’s not just the fingers. This is a muscle tissue disease. The heart is a muscle. The lungs are a muscle. She has a pacemaker and is frequently short of breath.

She does not Jitterbug. Anymore.

Here’s the thing, though: you wouldn’t know my mother was sick just by looking at her. Yes, when we are out (usually, with my daughters, shopping), she will occasionally stop and hold onto something, or someone, and catch her breath. On what she calls her “bad days,” we have to use the handicap sign so she doesn’t have to walk so far into the store or restaurant. But any suggestion that perhaps we should stay home, that she should rest, is met with a blank, uncomprehending stare. Why in the world, she seems to be thinking, would you even suggest that?

My parents go out all the time. My parents go out more than I do. My parents, as older people, go out more than I ever did.

Shortness of breath be damned.

My father is another story. He has been strong as a mule all his life. His only issue is that he’s...um...a bit overweight (come on, my dad READS this blog) and has developed type 2 diabetes. Still, he has never been on insulin and doesn’t do much to watch his food intake and it hasn’t bitten him in the ass in the way something like that can scare the hell out of you. At least not yet.

This summer, he had back surgery. Spinal stenosis, to be exact. When he checked into the hospital, the nurse asked my mom about the last time my dad was in the hospital. Her answer was, “Never.” Which is why it was surprising that he had some trouble recovering. At one point, he passed out, and my mother had to grab a phone to call an ambulance while trying to hold him up.

And then, a couple of weeks ago he got the flu. He couldn’t seem to shake it, and today, after traveling to Chicago, he was pretty logy. I have certainly seen my dad sick before. But I’ve never seen him stay sick.

I am trying not to worry about this. I am trying not to think that all the years of not watching his blood sugar and not losing weight are catching up to him. This could be just a really pesky flu. But maybe it will at least scare him into making some changes.

OK, let’s get back to the Jitterbugging. There are few things in the world more important to my parents than their granddaughters. Aside from each other (they’re coming up on their 51st anniversary), I’m not sure there’s anything or anyone more important to them than their granddaughters – including me. (OK, maybe my brother. They always loved him best.)

So when the girls, excited by my nostalgia, and wanting to make a connection to their own passion, asked my parents to Jitterbug for them, Bernie and Barbara happily complied. With a caveat to the girls that they wouldn’t make it through the whole song, we found a version of “In the Mood” on YouTube, and the three of us watched them.

They were good.

And I am still in awe.

No we're not. We're Jewish.

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:48:00 +0000

It was the first week of November, 2008. Barack Obama had just been elected president a couple of days before. And California’s gay marriage law had been annulled.

It was one of those rare times in my house when the TV wasn’t tuned to Disney or PBS Kids. We were watching the news, and a story about California came on. The girls were just about to turn six. I wasn’t sure how much they would understand, but I told them to be quiet and watch the TV.

When it was done I explained to them that gay people are not allowed to marry in most states in this country. I explained to them that California had decided to let gay people get married. And I explained to them that in this election, California had become the first state in our history to take away rights it had given to its citizens.

Then I said, “This is important because we’re a gay family.”

“No we’re not,” said Delaney, with utter certainty. “We’re Jewish.”

I had no answer.

For my daughters, at this point in their lives, being Jewish was a matter of identity. They had no notion of this force people call “God.” But they did celebrate Shabbat every Friday at their Jewish Community Center preschool. And they knew they were different, that most of the people in their kindergarten classes were not Jewish.

For them, also, being gay was a matter of identity. They have two moms. They do not have a dad. And there was only one other child out of 80+ kindergarteners who could say the same.

So, for them, being Jewish and being a gay family were sort of the same thing. We ARE. And we are.

And they’ve never hidden or been ashamed of either of those facts.

Fast forward to December 2011. They are now in third grade, halfway through their elementary school years. (And, yes, I’m very maudlin about that.) Somehow Dixon got into a conversation with two girls in her class about church.

“I don’t go to church,” she said. “I’m Jewish.”

The little girls’ reactions were apparently to look at her in shock and horror.

As Dixon related it to me later, they said to her, “You hate God.”

And, as she told me later, she just looked at them and thought, “You people are crazy.”

My first response was, “Welcome to the world of small-minded people.”

My second response was, “They were shocked that you were Jewish, but not that you have two moms?”

“They’re kinda new,” she said. “I don’t think they know that.” Then she flashed my grandfather’s mischievous grin. “But I might tell them tomorrow.”

This conversation threw me back to sixth grade in Las Vegas, when, at recess after show and tell, I was cornered on the playground by a little blonde Mormon girl named Shana and two of her equally blonde friends. For as long as I could remember, my mother had thrust a menorah in my hands every December for show and tell. I believe sixth grade may have been the last time.

“You killed Jesus,” Shana said to me, her face twisted up in triumph.

“I didn’t kill Jesus,” I said. “I didn’t even KNOW Jesus.”

I don’t remember the specifics of the rest of the conversation, but I do remember thinking exactly what Dixon thought oh so many years later: These people are crazy.

Some time ago I looked back on this and realized that growing up it didn’t matter what I was taught about Judaism. It didn’t matter whether we kept kosher or not. It didn’t matter how much I understood who Jesus was and why we didn’t believe he was the son of God.

What mattered was this: I knew I was different. And I was taught to be proud of that.

And that is partly why it’s easy for me to be gay. I don’t value and yearn to be part of the mainstream. I’m not chasing some idea of what I’m supposed to be. And I really don’t care what people think of me. There will always be little girls and big girls telling me I killed Jesus. And there will always be people telling me that my sexuality is an abomination.

These people are crazy. I’ve known that since I was 12.

Dixon is just about to turn 9. Last week, we were walking down the street, enjoying a holiday festival of shopping in Andersonville – a neighborhood of Chicago with a rather large lesbian population. Out of the blue, Dixon said, “Next Halloween, I’m going to be a menorah, because I’m proud to be Jewish, no matter what anybody says.”

Then she started singing Hava Nagila. Loudly. And she asked me to sing the words she didn’t know. The three of us were walking down a street full of holiday shoppers belting out an old Yiddish folk tune. I don’t know if either of the girls noticed some of the looks we got. If so, it didn’t make them stop.

They’re proud to be Jewish. They’re proud of their moms. They’re proud to be different. And they’re not going to let these crazy people tell them what to do.

And the conclusion I came to is that it really didn’t matter whether Delaney understood, three years ago, the distinction between being Jewish and being gay. What she understood is that we are who we are.

And we are.

Karen Krebsbach

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Lately, I've been thinking about the people who influence our lives. The big ones, we can usually tick off. Mom and/or dad is on most lists. A teacher who got through to us in some fundamental way. A mentor who questioned something we took on faith, and made us rethink our view of the world. But lately, the people who have been in my mind are the people whose contributions were small, but had large ripples; people whose names I might not remember, who are just in my head as a snapshot or a voice.

There's the disheveled editor who seemed to be overwhelmingly disorganized, snapping my head back one day by refusing to file my story until I had added up and analyzed the numbers. He was right – looking at the numbers led me to realize there was something amiss, and I called back and asked more questions. In the theatre industry in Chicago – which I covered for 20 years – I am known for checking and rechecking the numbers, and often finding mistakes.

There are the two women who took me under their wing when I was working tech for a big show once. I started out working in lighting, and the board operator (who was in charge of the crew) tried to kiss me, then was verbally abusive for a sadly memorable week after I rebuffed him. These women, whom I can most accurately and lovingly describe as “broads” (of the kind that you have to have lived in Las Vegas to really know), got me transferred out of the light crew and onto the stage crew and then literally acted as a barrier to the asshole when he put up a fuss. I don't know their names. I was 20. They were in their 40s or 50s. If they are still alive, I'm sure they don't remember me. But the example they showed me of how strong women take care of each other has stayed with me. I would totally act as a barrier in a similar situation.

Then there's Karen Krebsbach. I remember her name partly because I thought it was cool, and partly because there's a Krebsbach family in Garrison Keillor's “Lake Wobegon.” And she was from the midwest; Wisconsin or Minnesota, I can't remember.

Karen was an editor at the first daily I worked at. I did obits, and tried to break into writing longer features. I tackled education funding in Massachusetts. I wrote about eminent domain, and how some homeowners were being screwed by the government in the service of a national park. Other editors there thought I was wasting my time. One even took a quote from a state senator out of one of my pieces on education funding. The senator posited, in a face to face interview, that the model should be changed from property taxes to sales taxes – a radical idea in the '80s, but an intuitive one in an area just west of Boston where property tax growth was fixed, but the high tech industry was just taking hold.

The editor told me the senator hadn't actually introduced legislation, so the quote shouldn't be in the piece.

But Karen... stayed with me. She was nice. She was smart. She hung around after hours to go over my longer pieces and help me shape them. Writing about larger issues is a bit like sculpting. Karen was a great sculptor, and she helped me see how to craft and sculpt, too.

After I left that job and got an internship at the Boston Globe sports department, I found to my surprise and delight that Karen was working in the Globe's business section. We didn't have coffee or anything. But we were happy to see each other, talked about what we were working on. She wasn't that much older than me, but she encouraged me to dream – to go after what I wanted. She was the first person who actively told me that I was a good writer. For her, it seemed a given. I didn't let on how much I appreciated the assumptiveness of her opinion. I didn't let on a lot in those days.

But in the years since, whether I realized it or not, I would hear Karen's voice as I was writing. It could have been something as simple as “be consistent with your references” or as complicated as “Who's voice are you telling this with?” Words and phrases and ideas would come through my head as if they were mine – which, of course, they were – and I'd always have this vague pull to the original discussion where I learned them.

We didn't spend much time together at all. But I remember Karen Krebsbach. And I appreciate the influence she had on my life.

So I thought I'd get in touch with her. Hell, you can find anybody these days, especially someone who works in a public medium like journalism. I wanted to thank her. I wanted her to know that she had left a mark in someone she only knew fleetingly.

So I Googled her. And this is what I found:

“Karen Krebsbach, Former Executive Editor at U.S. Banker, Dies at 52”

The headline is from American Banker, published on July 19, 2010. It was not the first source I saw, but it was the most comprehensive. She had moved on from when I knew her to live in New York and cover investment and international business. She managed a number of publications that won awards. She was widely recognized for an insightful column called “Inside Track.” She was successful.

That didn't surprise me.

She had breast cancer. For some reason, that floored me. She died way too young. She died before it even occurred to me to thank her. I sat at my computer and cried.

I wish I could end with some big admonishment about taking stock of the people in your life before it's too late. But we know that already, and we largely do – for the people who are actually IN our lives. But the people who influence us on the margins, who help shape us in very small but sometimes deeply profound ways – we don't really even know who they are. We just don't. I remember because I'm a writer. I'm a storyteller. Those kinds of memories and stories come more easily – anything could be fodder.

I'm glad I knew Karen Krebsbach. I'm glad she had an influence on my work. I'm sorry that it never occurred to me to thank her sooner. But, when I think about it, I realize I have been thanking her for 20+ years. I've been passing her advice along, and adding my own to it, helping people shape their own work. That's how we make the world a better place. She knew that. And she did.

My Day Part 2 - Success

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about my pretty shitty day , and I’ve gotten a fair number of responses – which is kinda cool. This has been my answer: wait for part 2. Because while part 1 is about how overwhelming life can be raising kids alone on few resources, part 2 is the very secure knowledge that I can. That is to say, I am able to.

This is what I did after I wrote my piece yesterday: I helped my kids study for their spelling bee.

This may seem like a small thing, but it is an incredibly important building block. One of my daughters (yeah, the one who got her baby tooth capped yesterday) is – despite the fact that she’s very smart and very capable – very afraid of failure. She’s never failed. Therefore, she’s never really succeeded. She avoids competition, because she might lose. The spelling bee is a competition she is more likely to win, or at least do well in. It took me five days and a potentially expensive bribe to get her to agree.

But it’s worth it. Because the prize at the end of this is not winning a trophy or getting some refurbished electronic toy. The prize at the end of this is knowing that she can reach beyond her limits, and in doing so perhaps begin to discover something about herself she didn’t already know.

We talked a lot about that idea this past summer, as we watched “So You Think You Can Dance.” Yes, the dancers are marvelous. Yes, the choreography is (mostly) beautiful and intriguing. Yes, my daughters love dance. But what I kept pointing out was how much the dancers were changing as the competition wore on – how much they’d grown both as artists and as people. Each one of those dancers was continually asked to do something he or she didn’t think they could do. And then they did it anyway. And they did it well. You could see the confidence growing as if it were a material thing.

I’ve experienced that kind of growth. Yes, I, like my daughter, have passed things up because I didn’t think I was good enough or I didn’t want to fail – only to curse myself later. But I’ve also waded in – gotten up on that stage, sent in that story, came out, fell in love, had my heart torn apart. I started a business because I had to. I wrestled with the challenges as they came up. And I have succeeded way beyond what I had dreamed – even though I’m not rich by society’s definition.

I have learned tremendously through my failures and challenges. I am incredibly capable. I have that confidence. I want my daughters to have that confidence, too.

Now, being me, I can’t simply stop at my daughters. Every day, as I have to juggle more and more balls simply because of my marital and economic circumstances, I think of the people in the same sorts of situations who grew up without ever learning the exhilaration of succeeding beyond their dreams, who have never gained that confidence. I think of people who really have no dreams.

This is what kills me when I hear people saying that the poor are poor because they choose to be. That statement lacks realization that being poor means you have many more hoops to jump through – to arrange child care for your first AND second jobs; to get to the grocery store in between and schedule (if not cook) meals; to help your kids with life and homework; to keep the gas or electricity on. And to deal with the ever-present mortification, that whisper of “you’re worthless, you’re worthless,” every time you have to ask for help, or every time your lights get turned off because the electricity money went to repair your car so you could get to work - or every time you see your children give up. Being poor and single with kids is a constant challenge.

What happens to the people who never learned as kids or young adults to overcome challenges? What happens to the people who never gained that confidence? What do we do with a whole swath of the population that simply doesn’t know HOW to succeed, and who don’t have a hope of having a hope?

That’s a lot of what it means to be poor in this country. It’s not that people don’t choose to start a business, or get their PhD. It’s that those things are not even on their radar screens. Or if they are, the rest of their life is so overwhelming they simply can’t reach it.

Yes, we hear success stories – of some kid who grew up poor and ended up becoming a Supreme Court justice or an astronaut. But there’s an element in those stories that is always the same. There's always someone in the story who demanded more than societal expectations. There’s always somebody who taught them how to dream.

Despite those stories, there are people in this country who are so overwhelmed by what it takes just to get through one day that they have no hope of ever conquering it. They have no hope of making it better. They don’t know that they can.

So, every day I deal with those balls. And I look my daughters in the eye and I tell them they’re gonna enter the fuckin’ spelling bee whether they want to or not. And I go to work and I focus on making something wonderful. I focus on the future.

Because I can.

My Day - 11-01-11

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 03:35:00 +0000

I am a single mother with a full-time, oddly demanding job.
My job only pays me $30,000 per year.
It is a 1-hour commute each way.

In 1990 I started a newspaper for the theatre industry.
— It was very successful.
— It ran for 20 years, though the last 10 have been hard and it has now all but closed.
— I am writing this on the internet.
— The last two sentences are related.

Today, I faced:

Getting my kids out the door for school.

Working from home in the morning because I had to...

Pick up one of my daughters and take her to the dentist because she had a cavity.

Watching as the dentist manhandled her, then charge me $520.
— Knowing that I couldn’t really get a better dentist because I don’t have dental insurance and only make $30,000 a year.
— Feeling ashamed.

While at the dentist holding my daughter down, missing a call from someone who wants to talk to me about taking over the business that is now all but closed.

Watching my daughter scream and cry from the pain and fear, because nobody explained to her what was going to happen, and they apparently didn’t numb her enough.

Feeling completely inadequate as a parent.

Knowing that “inadequate” is an inadequate word.

Coming home and being reminded that I have to take a university online ethics seminar, by tomorrow, for a part-time job that I have had since May, but have never actually worked.
— You work when they call you in.
— I’ve never been called in.
— But I have spent a fair amount of time doing administrative stuff for the university’s system.

Trying to sign up for the online ethics seminar, only to find that my ID and password don’t work.

Calling the university, getting the password and ID reset after a half an hour on the phone, then trying to log on again and finding it still didn’t work.

Getting an e-mail from the web developer for the business that is all but gone saying that he’s now able to do what he was supposed to do a year and a half ago, and knowing that the piece that’s hanging on will simply stop if I don’t do it.
— It will take an enormous amount of time and energy to get this done – by next week.
— If I don't get it done, my chances of passing the business on become almost nil.

Sitting with my daughter on the couch, making her soup and yogurt and applesauce and eating the same thing, even though I was starving, because I didn’t want to make her feel bad.

Working while sitting next to her and watching bad TV before going to pick up her sister from school.

Calling the state of Illinois’ Vital Check system to get copies of birth certificates for my daughters.
— I need the birth certificates because I need to sign them up for All Kids state insurance.
— This makes me feel more ashamed.

Being told by the Vital Check person that I needed to have the father’s name, and, after explaining to her that there was no father, but that there is another mother’s name on the birth certificate, having her ask me if I adopted my children and then having her tell me that the other mother has to ask for the birth certificates because “there can only be one mother.”

Holding my temper and just getting it done, while my daughter was pointing at the phone and making “cuckoo” signs.

Being asked by my daughter if she can use my computer.
— My computer was purchased in 2008 and is therefore old in computer years.
— My even older computer that the girls have can’t support the newer online game sites.
— I can’t afford a new computer.

Suddenly losing it, standing at the refrigerator, as my daughter looked on after she asked if she could use the computer.

Getting comforted by my 9-year-old. My 9-year-old whose mouth hurts.

Feeling completely inadequate as a parent.

Knowing again that “inadequate” is a horribly inadequate word.

Wanting nothing more than to just sit down in the middle of my incredibly messy house and not move anymore.

Writing this instead.

Tie Day

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Monday was tie day. Kids had to wear ties to school. For some reason we have embarked on a month of silly clothes. The school will launch into this every once in a while, and it usually distresses me. I have enough trouble getting them to stop wearing shorts and skirts. Now I have to add another piece of clothing?

The girls told me on Friday that they had to wear a tie to school on Monday. I looked at them. I realize that some lesbians have ties in their wardrobes. I’m not one of them. And I quickly realized that this day was designated with the idea that kids and dads might have a nice time picking out the appropriate tie.

Aw.

I knew when my kids were little that when a school or organization they belonged to had a daddy/daughter dinner, my kids would have to hang out at home with me. I was prepared for that. But a tie? One piece of clothing can put them completely outside of the game?

“We’ll try to borrow a couple of ties,” I told them. Hell, it must be easier to borrow ties than a dad for a dinner. But it was an incredibly busy weekend, and we are just not the kind of family who would remember that someone’s supposed to wear a tie.

So Sunday night rolls around and as the girls are picking out their clothes, they suddenly realize they will be left out if they don’t have a tie. I looked at them again.

“We’re gonna have to improvise.”

Let me tell you a little bit about my daughters. My daughter Dixon is quick witted, easy going and has a finely tuned sense of humor. She understands improvisation. Delaney is quick tempered, usually doesn’t want to go anywhere, and is acutely tuned into what people think of her. She has a weekly homework assignment to answer questions using vocabulary words. Last week, the word was ‘plunge,’ and the question was, “What item would you like to see plunge in price?” Dixon and I looked at each other and said, “An iPad.” Delaney looked down at her paper and said, “I don’t want to say that. Then people will know we don’t have money.”

“Gotta tell you something, kiddo. People around here already know we don’t have money. They can tell by the cracks in our driveway. They can tell by the untamed garden. They can tell by the fact that I live here alone with two kids. I don’t care. My worth is not in my bank account. Although it would be nice to have an iPad.”

This was not what Delaney wanted to hear, though I have no doubt it was what she needed to hear. Her face scrunched up, and I found myself wishing again that she would take her glasses off when she started to cry.

“Delaney, not everybody in your school has an iPad.”

“Most people have parents who at least have an iPad,” Dixon shot back. I ignored this. The thing with twins is to not let them gang up.

“Are you ashamed of something, Delaney? Are you ashamed of me? Do you not like who you are?”

Her eyes widened, and I thought, “Maybe that was a slightly heavy handed, Jewish mother guilt thing. I didn’t really mean it that way.”

“No! I’m not ashamed of you. And I like myself. I just want other people to like me.”

“And you think they’ll like you less because you don’t have an iPad?”

She shrugged. The other thing about Delaney is that she is very smart. Logic will always win out.

I don’t have a blow by blow of the rest of the conversation. Delaney moved on, trying to find something she wanted the price to plunge on. We talked about red Ferraris. We talked about diamond rings. We talked about vacations. But we ultimately agreed that we really had no use for any of those things. Eventually, she wrote “iPad.”

But Sunday night, I did not have two hours to spend talking her through the idea of improvising a tie. I went to their top drawer, pulled out a chenille scarf, put it around my neck and tied a knot.

“A tie,” I said.

Dixon looked intrigued. Delaney said that it wasn’t a tie and everybody would know it and she wasn’t going to wear it, even if she stood out by not wearing one.

Not my issue. We went to bed. And in the morning Dixon sported a very classy pink, sparkly tie.

As they were getting ready for bed Monday night, Dixon told me that people came up to ask her why she wasn’t wearing a real tie.

“Well, we don’t have a dad and nobody in our house wears ties, so I used a scarf.”

This answer elicited lots of questions.

“Josh asked me where my dad was, if he died or something,” Dixon said. “I told him we had two moms and we never had a dad. And a bunch of people asked how we were born—”

“You shouldn’t have said that to Josh,” Delaney interrupted. “Josh will take that kind of stuff and spread it around everywhere.”

At this, I actually held up my hand.

“Stop. Who cares if Josh tells everybody you have two moms? Why is that something you wouldn’t want to spread?”

Dixon gave the answer she’s been giving since they were five: “Yeah, Delaney, everybody already knows we have two moms.”

This time, Delaney sort of laughed and shrugged, and just to drive the point home, I gave them two examples of things that WOULD be embarrassing and that Josh should never know.

Then I turned back to Dixon. “So what did you tell them about how you were born?”

“I told them it was too complicated.”

“Well...” I began, but Dixon cut me off.

“We have a sperm donor and my mom took his sperm and put it with her egg and created us. I really don’t want to tell people that in school.”

She had a point. Perhaps that might be a bit much for third graders. Still, I admired how she handled the situation – both with her fellow students and with me.

Watching Local News with a Too Aware 8-Year-Old

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:17:00 +0000

I stopped watching local news years ago. It was Jeffrey Dahmer that did it. This was in 1991. One story of the bodies found in his apartment was enough. But 20 minutes of a 25-minute newscast, for days at a time, with each story giving more gruesome details, was more than I could take. Sometimes the headlines are all we need.

When I've glimpsed local news since then – mostly when my parents are in town – I see it hasn't gotten much better. It's occurred to me that during the 20 years since I stopped watching local news, Illinois has had two governors convicted of crimes, the country has witnessed the dismantling of any safeguards on our financial system, we've seen scores of kids killed while standing on the street corner, our education system has lowered dramatically compared with the rest of the world (we are now ranked 18 out of 36 industrialized nations) and we've been plunged into a recession. I wonder how much better our country would be if the broadcast media had focused on any of these things before they became out of control and did damage. Instead, we got cursory looks at the stock market, against the backdrop of incessant reporting on Jeffrey Dahmer or Casey Anthony or Balloon Boy or OJ.

But I digress.

Recently, a friend of mine has been touting WGN news in the morning as fun and entertaining, while still reporting about important things. So, since I was wide awake at 5:30 this morning, I headed downstairs to get in a quick workout – and thought I'd see what the show was all about.

Problem is, I wasn't alone. Ever since her other mom (her Uma) moved to Florida last month, Dixon has been my shadow. I can't pee without her following me – even at 3am. This morning, just as I tried to sneak downstairs, her head popped up. So off we trudged together.

The first thing she noticed on the news was that the Sox were playing the Twins today. “The Twins” is a specific phrase that, in Dixon's lifetime, has mostly been used when referring to her and her sister. So she was confused by the baseball game.

“The twins must be part of the Sox team,” she said.

“No, the Twins are a team from Minnesota. They're named that because there are two big cities in Minnesota, and they're right next to each other, so they're called the “Twin Cities.”

“But...are there TWO of them?” she asked.

“There are two cities, but there's only one team.”

“And that one team is called the Twins?” she clarified.

“Yes.”

“But there's only one team.”

It was more of a statement than a question. She got it, but she thought it was kind of nonsensical.

I should mention here that my children do not like sports. I have no idea where this came from.

The next story on the news was about four teenage boys who were shot in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood around 10 o'clock last night. The newscasters, who had just been joking about a lame story about dieting, seriously described random shooting on a crowded street of a late summer evening.

“People were shot in Chicago?” Dixon asked.

Let's digress for a moment. I live in the suburbs, but I bring my kids to the city every chance I get. I want them to be city-wise and unafraid. It was one of the issues I dealt with when we decided to move out of the city. It would be easier in the suburbs, but I was not going to allow my kids to be sheltered. But Dixon's world is rocked right now, and suddenly she gets to add murder in the city to her worries.

“There's a section of town that is having a real problem with violence right now,” I said. “The places we go are pretty safe.”

“We NEVER go to that section of town?” she asked.

“No. We never go there.”

I declined to tell her how lucky she was that she had a choice, that the people who live there don't want the violence either, but they can't do much about it. That's a discussion for another day.

The next story on the news was about a woman who was shot in the head playing dice last night.

“Wow,” Dixon said, “there's a lot of murder and shooting.”

“Mostly on the news,” I answered. “The news doesn't report good things. They only report bad things. So when you watch, you get this weird sense that only bad things happen. That's why I don't watch news that often.”

This seemed to mollify her, and I was spinning hard on my trainer...until the next story, which was about a mom who was getting out of prison after having abandoned her baby in 2009. She wanted the baby back.

To Dixon, this is worse than murder.

“She left her baby in the bushes!” she said with some alarm.

I stopped pedaling.

“Yes,” I said, getting off the bike. “She was probably very young and very scared and her family probably would have done something bad to her if they found out that she had a baby – or at least she probably thought they would. She didn't know what to do, but she probably just wanted her life to be like it was before she got pregnant. So she did something stupid. They actually have a law where if you're in that situation, you can bring the baby to the hospital or the police station or the fire department and they will take the baby and the mother won't get in trouble.”

Dixon looked at me. I could see the film playing in her head as if it was being projected on a movie screen.

“But they only have that for babies, right? Not bigger kids?”

“No. They don't have that for bigger kids. Most people don't want to get rid of either their babies or their bigger kids. Most people love their kids. But sometimes women are scared and abused and they don't know what they're doing, so they give the baby away.”

“Like Quinn did in 'Glee,'” she pointed out, then added, “Except Quinn didn't leave her baby behind a bush.”

“Yes,” I said, “like Quinn in 'Glee.' Except Quinn was smart and made choices and gave her baby a good home. She wasn't desperate and scared.”

“And,” I added, “you will never be desperate or scared either. You have a family that loves you and supports you.”

She nodded. I resumed my workout. A few minutes later she jumped up.

“I've got to call Uma. I've got to tell her that I watched the news and it was all about murder!”

She ran out of the room to get the phone. I turned to ESPN.

The Consequences of Children

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 03:55:00 +0000

Delaney has been hard tonight. She threw a fit doing homework because I wouldn’t tell her the answers. She threw a fit during showers because she wanted to read after and I said to read while her sister was in the shower. Dixon just asked me if I would cuddle them for a little while after they got in bed. I said, “I don’t know. I need some time for myself.” And then I walked away. A few minutes later, I came back to see how Delaney was doing in the shower, and Dixon was sitting on her bed pensively. She simply looked up at me and said, “But mommy, that’s the consequences of having children. You have to love them and cuddle them and listen to them and do homework with them and spend time with them.”

I pretended I was mad at her. But really, I was appreciating the real consequences of having children.

Later, I was sitting in the kitchen and she came out and said, “See you think you spend too much time with us, and we think you don’t spend enough time with us. That’s the problem.”

I took her to her room and cuddled her. What choice did I have?

The Wisdom of Women: Dead Mothers in Children’s Television and Film

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:41:00 +0000

Hannah Montana’s mother is dead.

Well, Hannah Montana is a fictional character who’s the alter ego of Miley Stewart, another fictional character played by Miley Cyrus, who’s a real person. Miley Cyrus’ mother is alive and well. Miley Stewart’s mother is dead. In the show, she would come back to her in dreams, played by Brooke Shields.

My daughters watched “Hannah Montana” until it went off the air last season. This means that I watched “Hannah Montana” until it went off the air last season. This is one of the sacrifices of motherhood. Believe me.

The show was about a very well-adjusted young woman who wants to keep herself well-adjusted by not being pulled into the trappings of fame. But she wants to be famous. So she creates an alter ego, who is fantastically famous, while she lives a “normal” life as a teenager.

In the show.

In real life, the character Hannah Montana also became fantastically famous. Unlike the show, in real life Miley Cyrus is fantastically famous, too.

There are a couple of things that always bothered me about the show. The first is that the ostensible premise is to look at the downside of fame, and the trade-offs that get made when one leaves the world of anonymity for the Hollywood star factory. But the show never explored that fascinating premise. Instead, it was a cookie cutter sit-com about being loyal to your friends, and following through, and not cheating, and being responsible—typical storylines for 7-12 year-olds (which, by the way, is younger than the demographic of the teenage characters).

Why set a show around such an interesting premise if you’re never going to use it?

The other issue I had with “Hannah Montana” is that at the start of the show, the 12-year-old Hannah had no mother – and didn’t seem to be bothered by that at all. The kid had no emotional or identity issues as she went through her teenage years – you know, the time when we often measure ourselves against and push away from our MOTHERS.

Name me a 12-year-old who has lost her mother who doesn’t think about her every day? Name me a well-adjusted teenager who, even as she insists her mother is ruining her life, really doesn’t go to her for help or advice, or to buy the prom dress or show her grades to?

This was a show about identity, and having a mother who dies when you’re a child certainly affects your view of who you are. Yet they completely ignored it.

At first I thought this was a good thing, an opportunity to teach my children about death, and impermanence, and living life to the fullest. At first I thought there was some depth to the choice. Then I started noticing that Miley Stewart is not the only motherless character in children’s television and film.

They’re everywhere. Or, should I say, nowhere at all.

In iCarly – which is a pretty well-written show for Nickelodeon – the family unit is Carly, played by Miranda Cosgrove, and her older, eccentric artist brother Spencer, played by Jerry Trainor. The father is in the armed forces in Afghanistan, and there’s one show in which he gets to watch the iCarly webcast. But the mother is never mentioned. What possible advantage could there be for creating an alibi for the missing dad, but not the missing mom?

My kids pointed out to me recently that the new Disney show, “A.N.T. Farm” has a main character, played by China Anne McClain who has the requisite goofy brother, and a strict but hapless dad – but no mom. It must be noted that my kids didn’t tell me this because they were shocked or wondering. They told me because they knew I was writing this piece, and wanted me to know the latest research, as it were.

“There can’t be that many writers in Hollywood who’s moms all abandoned them or died or something,” says Sharon Ross, a media critic and professor at Columbia College Chicago’s television department. “If you grew up with a strong mom, wouldn’t you notice that missing in your own representations that you’re creating on what it’s like to grow up?”

Hope Edelman had the same questions. And, not long after her book “Motherless Daughters” came out in 1994, she had the opportunity to put that question to some TV writers.

Their answer: “If you create a sitcom with just a father, it would offer a lot of potential storylines.” Sitcom dads are often hapless, fish out of water, trying to figure out how to relate to their kids. The writers also said that having a single dad presents opportunities for dating to be part of the storyline – though they offered no explanation about why they couldn’t weave a storyline around mothers dating.

This, of course, flies against the experience of most of the kids watching the shows. As both Ross and Edelman point out, statistically speaking, families in America are more likely to be headed by a single mom than a single dad.

Edelman said one writer gave her another reason so many TV moms were dead: “Because there are more roles for men on TV.” She says she didn’t press him on the obvious argument that if more writers wrote about women...there would BE more roles for women.

Sometimes you just gotta pick your battles.

My children and I have talked about this a lot. I am definitely that mother who annoys her kids by pointing out inconsistencies or stereotypes on television. “Yeah, mom, we see that,” is the usual answer I get these days. They are tactful enough to leave the “now shut up” unspoken.

But when we first discovered the “Dead Mother Syndrome” in kids’ television and movies, the girls were completely surprised and as puzzled as I was.

We have a list of numerous children’s films or TV shows in which the mother is dead. Most of them, interestingly, are produced by Disney. And some of them do have a point. The first “Lilo and Stitch” movie, for instance, is about family, and how family doesn’t have to be traditional; how it could be formed, in fact, with your big sister and an alien clone. Extrapolated not very far, it speaks to gay families, divorced or never married families—any sort of non-traditional grouping in which people love and take care of each other.

But most of the movies fall into the “mom’s death has inspired me to prove myself and/or make my dad happy” category. “Herbie Fully Loaded.” “Jump In.” “Life Size.” “Smart House.” I could go on. In each case, either the relationship with dad is repaired, or dad has a new relationship, of which the kids, in the end, fully approve.

At least in those movies mom’s have some role – even if it’s from beyond the grave. In kids sitcom TV, says Edelman, “absent mothers have almost always died of undisclosed illnesses at a distant time in the past.” There’s no talk in the early episodes about starting a new life without mom. There’s no talk about mom at all. It’s as if these pre- and early teen characters were just dropped from the sky, or made from their father’s rib.

“It almost makes me think that there’s a secret rule in a Disney book that says, ‘Kill off the mother,’” says Ross.

I’m not saying that dead moms don’t have a place in the pantheon of storytelling. Lord knows, without orphans, there would be no Charles Dickens, no “Harry Potter.” The “Nanny McPhee” series, in which the mother is missing in at least the first movie, follows a long tradition of 19^th century mothers dying in childbirth. And we can’t forget “Cinderella.” Certainly, her real mother wouldn’t have treated her so badly; and if that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t needed to have been rescued by a fairy godmother and a prince. (This, of course, is an entirely new topic for later discussion.)

“There’s a mythological coming of age [story] to have to go on your own journey without your mother; often vanquishing the evil stepmother,” says Edelman. “It’s a familiar formula. Each of those fables or fairy tales has its own etymology and different versions.” And, Edelman points out, “Some of these stories are coming out of an era where maternal death is much more common than it is today.”*

Edelman posits that some great literary fiction – like that of Virginia Woolf or George Elliot – came about in part because of the early deaths of the writers’ mothers.

So, dead mothers do inspire their children. Hell, Edelman herself lost her mother when she was young, and channeled her grief and confusion into five best-selling books exploring the journey of growing up without a mother.

Thing is, I’m sure she would trade all of that to have her mother still with her.

And, I’m guessing, so would the women who contributed to her second book, which is comprised of some of the mail sacks of letters Edelman received after the first book – from women who had finally found something that validated their experience. They couldn’t find it in popular culture. Sadly, it’s still hard to find.

“You know what message [kids TV} tells a motherless kid?” asks Edelman. “It’s not OK to talk about it.” And in that, the writers are not just choosing characters for the easiest storylines – they’re making death and grief into something that can be wiped away with a laugh track.

I’m not gonna miss any opportunity to point this out to my children – no matter how often they refrain from telling me to shut up.

*According to both the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Digital History Project at the University of Houston, death from childbirth ran about 8 percent in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. That’s 8 out of 100 women. Until recently, according to the RSM, the Church of England had a prayer for “The safe deliverance and preservation from the great dangers of childbirth.”

Today, in the U.S. and England, about .1 percent of women die in childbirth – that’s 10 in 100,000 (though the rate is higher in third world and developing countries - and lower in more civilized nations like Sweden and Australia).

Riots and Fires and Looting, Oh My

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:45:00 +0000

The girls and I were in the car Tuesday morning listening to the BBC news about the riots in London. They talked to a shopkeeper, whose store was completely looted. He said, in an accent that I registered as not native London, that the last 10 years of his life had been wiped out. He said he called the police but they didn’t come. He was crying.

“Last night, when I was upstairs watching the news with you, they showed all those fires in London.”

It was Delaney, directly behind me, putting context to the anguish she had just heard.

“Yes,” I said, “there was rioting in London. People were angry and they were setting fires and destroying things, and stealing what they could get.”

At that moment, the BBC aired a 30-second or so interview with a bunch of teenagers who had been part of the riots. The interviewer asked them why they were doing this. There was no deep introspection in their answers. First they said it was the government’s fault; kids in the background could actually be heard yelling that it was the Conservatives who were in power who made them do it. I wondered if they even knew what Conservatives were, or the policies they embodied. Then they said it was because of the way the police had treated them, and that it felt great to overpower the police. Then they blamed it on the rich people, the business people who have all the money and whose stores they looted.

“That’s not very responsible.”

It was Dixon, who apparently was listening as closely to this interview as I was.

“No,” I said, “it wasn’t. But they’re angry. And when you get angry enough, you take to the streets. This is a group of kids who have probably seen nothing but unemployment and poverty and just in the last few years have seen it get worse. Someone was killed by police, and the teens finally decided they wouldn’t take anymore. And then they blame the rich – or the people who they think are rich – because they feel like they need someone to blame, and they don’t understand the real reasons their lives are so miserable.”

I didn’t go into the real reasons these kids’ lives are so miserable, and my girls didn’t ask.

I also didn’t point out that they were doing exactly what rich people had taught them to do – focus on toys and consuming things, and breaking the law when they saw the opportunity. That is, after all, what Wall Street did in packaging so many bad loans and selling them to pension funds, or shorting their positions at the expense of their clients. My kids wouldn’t understand this, any more than they would understand Bernie Madoff.

But my kids do inherently understand consumerism. They understand what it’s like to see people with the latest in electronic toys or the latest American Girl doll and to hear the constant refrain, “We can’t afford it.”

Somehow, simultaneously, they understood the longing of the rioters to have things, but the also understood that it was wrong, that, as Dixon pointed out, it wasn’t very responsible.

My kids likely won’t end up rioting in the streets. They might be very politically involved – how could they not be with a mother who talks about changing the world all the time – but it won’t be mindless anger.

But where does the mindless anger come from?

There are those among us who might say it’s these kids’ own fault. “These people” are shiftless and lazy and come from parents who are shiftless and lazy and they don’t know how to work or take responsibility. Then they go out and look to blame other people.

I think part of that is true. But it ignores the role that hopelessness plays in the life of the poor. And it ignores how people who have to go without, fundamentally feel when they see a society in which accumulation is the real religion.

I have sometimes asked people who take this view – and there are many representatives in a certain political offshoot party in the U.S. - what they would do with all these shiftless and lazy people who have no work ethic and therefore no worth to society. The answers I get back are amusing, and sometimes frightening. “Make ‘em work,” is one refrain. Because, truly, in their view, the problem with “these people” is that they don’t want to work, not that there are no jobs for them, or not that the only jobs they can muster are designed to keep them in an endless loop of poverty. Another answer I get is, “I don’t give a fuck what happens to them, just as long as I don’t have to see them or deal with them.”

Right. Got it. “They can be poor if they choose to,” goes the refrain. “Just don’t shove it in my face.” I think I’ve heard that before in some other context.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone the “Clockwork Orange” behavior that the mob fell into in Tottenham and other cities and neighborhoods in Great Britain. I’m a shopkeeper at heart. I’m a small business person. I could have easily been that guy crying that his life has been wiped out. He’s certainly the one I sympathize with most.

But I do understand what drove them there. Hopelessness breeds anger, and it breeds a lack of regard for the social structures and rules we all live by. Those social structures and rules haven’t done anything for these kids. The cops harass them, often, I would bet, for no reason. They have no money or jobs. They feel as worthless as the people who ignore them want them to feel. But what many in the larger society don’t realize is how dangerous people become when they feel worthless. They have nothing to lose.

We ignore them at our own peril. We can say they’re “morally deficient”, but eventually we’ll have to wake up; eventually, they will show us our own immorality.

I was in a Facebook discussion forum last December when we were discussing tax hikes for the wealthy. One woman came on to say that $250,000 was too low to start tax hikes. She was a stay at home mom in Manhattan and her husband made just over $250,000 and if they had to pay more taxes then they would have to give up one of their vacations. And that was simply unacceptable.

I couldn’t help it. I asked her if she’d ever heard of Marie Antoinette. The next day, she dropped out of the discussion forum.

So in this context, I’m not really incredulous when uneducated and angry kids in London blame the rich for all their troubles. They may not understand who the rich are or what they do, but they do understand that the game is rigged, and that a smaller number of people have money, and a larger number don’t. And they understand that they – and many people like them in the U.S. – are largely invisible.

You can cocoon yourself in your nice house and your nice car and your cable television broadcasting “reality” shows and never see the reality around you. Until the riots start. Hopefully, we can all wake up before they become more widespread.

Sisters and the Traveling Condom

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:45:00 +0000

The girls and I watched “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” last night. They had already seen part 1 at their other mom’s – where they have a tendency to watch things that are a little beyond my comfort zone. But part 1 seemed like a harmless movie, even though the girls made a point of telling me there was kissing in it. And part 2 was largely harmless, too

Until the condom broke.

To be fair, the scene between a couple of college freshman – who were played by and looked like and had the maturity of people in their late 20s – was pretty innocent. And actually well-acted by Amber Tamblyn – a name that I have heard in the ether, but have never connected to a face or a talent. And it really was mostly just kissing.

This is where I love watching things through my children’s eyes. The characters kissed. She hesitated, then nodded to him. He got excited and tore off his shirt. And they kissed some more. End of scene. It was all subtext. And my 8-year-olds were going, “Why is he so excited? What’s going on? Are they having sex?”

Oy.

“Yes. She just said she’d have sex with him and I think it might be their first time.”

This is my philosophy – answer questions honestly as they come up. The girls know how women get pregnant. They know that most people have sex in order for the sperm to get into the woman and fertilize the egg. They know that’s not how they, themselves, were made. And they know that Finn from “Glee” wasn’t very smart in believing that sperm can travel in a hot tub and get a girl pregnant.

They know to be smart.

Which is why it pissed me off when the condom broke.
Let’s be clear here: condoms work 99% of the time. The rare times they fail, it’s usually when they’re damaged before they go on. Most of the time when people talk about condom “failure” it’s because they forgot to or didn’t want to stop and take the time to use one.

But it’s not dramatic for the condom to work 99% of the time. And the writers needed to have a “pregnancy scare” storyline. So they made it break.

I am of two minds about this. First, I’m glad they used a condom to begin with. Great, positive message for teens watching the movie. And I’m glad they showed a montage of Tamblyn’s character acutely observing the lesser joys of parenthood. But by having the condom break, they’re simply perpetuating the erroneous idea (but one pushed by an irresponsible minority) that condoms aren’t affective contraception, because they break too much. This will not encourage teenagers to use condoms. Nor will it encourage them to not have sex. It will just encourage them to not bother using condoms because they don’t think it’s going to work anyway.

I want to teach my children to be safe, to protect themselves. And, while I know that messages like “smoking and drugs will kill you” and “everybody goes to graduate school” sink in deeper the earlier children start to hear it, I didn’t really plan to enlighten them about condoms or the specifics of sex at 8 ½

But the male character came out of the bathroom worried and scared. And when he said the condom broke, Tamblyn’s character became worried and scared. And, so, of course, the viewers were supposed to be worried and scared.

“Mom, what’s a condom?”

Shit.

I paused the DVD player.

“A condom is... OK, you know how men and women have sex and that’s how the sperm gets from the man to the woman to fertilize the egg?”

“Yeah, yeah, we know that. But what’s a condom?”

“Well, a condom is something made of rubber or stretchy plastic that the man uses so that when the sperm comes out, it will be trapped in the condom, instead of going into the woman. If the condom breaks, then the woman has a chance of getting pregnant. This character’s only 19. She’s in college. She doesn’t want to get pregnant.”

But, of course, I couldn’t stop there. I had to explain to them that condoms don’t usually break and that another reason to use them is so you don’t get diseases. I felt compelled to dispel the message the movie was giving. I also told them that the character’s worrying was kind of needless, since she could have simply gone to the NYU health clinic and gotten a prescription for the morning after pill.

But that would have totally negated the storyline.

At that point, the girls had had enough, and wanted to watch the movie again. Great. That went well.
Then came the scene where another character came to terms with her mom’s suicide. Luckily, the characters in the movie never uttered the word. It was all in the subtext. And luckily, even though my children are as fascinated as any about how living things die, I don’t really know that they understand that some people do it on purpose. In any event, they never cottoned on to exactly how the mother died. At that point, I was happy to let my children not understand.

"Gay Acting" and the Hypocrisy of Pointing It Out

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:02:00 +0000

So, is Marcus Bachmann gay? There’s a lot of speculation out there that the husband of presidential candidate and Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann is as queer as a three dollar bill. And, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest it may be so.

But how can we tell?

Well, he has devoted his entire life and career to “curing” people from being gay. This gives me pause. We are often driven to do things in our lives because of who we are and what we experience. Someone whose sister died of cancer in childhood might find their life’s work focused on curing cancer. People who have perfect pitch often become musicians. And I know quite a few psychologists – not one of them would ever claim that they were completely sane.

So, Marcus Bachmann’s life work would suggest an inordinate fascination with gay people. On the surface, it looks like he doth protest too much.

Then there’s the way he walks and talks. Jon Stewart did an hysterical segment on July 13’s “The Daily Show,” pointing out that Dr. Bachmann “dances and sounds not only gay, but center square gay” – referring to the flamingly hilarious Paul Lynde on “Hollywood Squares.”

I totally agree. Marcus Bachmann does sound and look gay.

But wait a minute. Are we supposed to judge whether or not people are gay because of how they look and sound?

Kristen Chenoweth doesn’t seem to think so. A year ago, Chenoweth was one of the loudest voices in an outcry against Newsweek columnist Ramin Setoodeh, who posited that Sean Hayes was too gay to successfully pull off the macho lead in the musical “Promises, Promises” (in which Chenoweth co-starred with Hayes).

Said Setoodeh, who is himself gay: “Hayes is among Hollywood’s best verbal slapstickers, but his sexual orientation is part of who he is, and also part of his charm.”

Chenoweth called this “horrendously homophobic,” “small minded” and “bigoted, among other things. She was joined by “Glee” producer Ryan Murphy, and a host of gay and lesbian rights groups.

I did question Setoodeh’s column a bit, but not for the reasons Chenoweth did. I think Setoodeh didn’t find his point – he needed a better editor than the one Newsweek had to offer him. And he strayed off into the “knowing people are gay beforehand” arena, which came out as a convoluted attack on our relentless pop cultural need to know people’s personal lives, which Aaron Sorkin also blamed.

I also wondered why Setoodeh cared whether a man came off as gay or straight when he was appearing in a musical.

But it seemed to me what Setoodeh was saying is that Hayes wasn’t a good enough actor in “Promises, Promises” to convince us that he was who his character was supposed to be. And Jon Stewart is saying that Marcus Bachmann isn’t a good enough actor, either.

So, where are the outraged voices? Why isn’t there an outcry about Stewart and a host of other pundits insinuating or outright speculating that Marcus Bachmann is gay?

I get that Dr. Bachmann’s hypocrisy makes him an easy mark. I get that both he and his wife are dangerous. I get that they’re hurting gay kids, and that this kind of “treatment” is often what leads to suicide. But what I don’t get is our own hypocrisy, making it OK to stereotype someone we don’t like, but not OK to stereotype someone we do like. This was exactly Setoodeh’s point: sometimes people do fit stereotypes, and it’s often the first thing people notice when they see or interact with them.

What disturbs me about this is that the reaction against the idea that we can tell if someone is gay smacks of homophobia. Is it bad to look and sound and act gay? Is that why we’re so gleeful about pointing at Marcus Bachmann, because it’s a weakness? And will that same weakness hurt actors who also look and sound gay? Does it hurt non-actors in their everyday lives?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then our obligation is to break through the prejudice, not stop the behavior – or excoriate people who point out the behavior and ask why it’s considered bad.

Setoodeh, in his Newsweek article, also mentioned Jonathan Groff, the openly gay actor who plays Rachel’s sometime boyfriend Jesse St. James in “Glee.” Groff intrigues me.

I first noticed him when the girls and I were watching the “Run Joey Run” episode of “Glee,” in which Rachel’s three love interests stalk down the school hallway while singing. As Groff was stalking toward the camera, I thought – and said out loud – “He’s gay.”

“No,” the girls answered. “He’s not. He’s Rachel’s boyfriend.”

“Yes,” I said, “but the actor is gay.”

At that point, I had never heard of Jonathan Groff and certainly didn’t know he was openly gay. And I started thinking that his acting gay was a choice, that perhaps, in one of the patented “Glee” plot twists, Jesse was going to end up with Kurt by the end of the season.

Jump forward a year. I’m watching Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” about the trial of Mary Surrat in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. At one point, the character of Louis Weichmann testifies against Surrat. The character was part of the group that included John Wilkes Booth, but he was apart from the group. He didn’t really fit in. That’s the background we’re given. I didn’t recognize the actor, and totally believed everything he was playing. But I also saw something else. In the midst of the scene, it dawned on me that they were making subtle insinuations that the character was gay. “Wow,” I thought, “there’s an interesting twist. Too bad the gay guy has to be the traitor. But it certainly gives us insight into how ostracized he might have felt, and his motivations for testifying against people who may have treated him badly.”

Then the credits ran, and I realized that Weichmann was played by Jonathan Groff.

Now, was Groff playing those subtle insinuations in both “Glee” and “The Conspirator” in order to give the characters more depth? Or is he not able to leave his essential gayness behind him when he steps on screen?

My point is, I don’t really care. I think it’s interesting that Groff brings those subtleties with him, intended or not. He’s a phenomenally gifted actor. Why shouldn’t a high school kid who loves to sing be not quite in touch with his sexuality? What’s wrong with having that undercurrent? How many of us had that undercurrent when we were in high school? Why should a man in a courtroom drama always be straight? By playing these characters Groff is, in a way, mainstreaming the characteristics we associate with being obviously gay – characteristics that we associate with Marcus Bachmann.
The more we see these characteristics portrayed in every day life on screen, the more people will accept these characteristics as part of real life. And that will take us steps beyond the Marcus Bachmanns of the world. But we can’t pretend the characteristics don’t exist. And we can’t pretend that acting gay is not, in our society, seen as a negative.

So let’s make up our minds. I’m for pointing out that Marcus Bachmann looks like a big ol’ fat queer. A dangerous, deluded, and rather sad big ol’ fat queer. But I’m also for pointing out that sometimes gay people who do good things act gay. Can you imagine how dull life would be without that?

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Here are some great stories about Bachmann, and the issue of calling him gay:
Gawker – “Marcus Bachman’s Big Gay Mess”
The Daily Beast – “Marcus Bachman’s Gay Cure” by Michelle Goldberg
Politicol News – “Is Marcus Bachmann Gay?”
Nerve.com – “Dear Liberals, Stop Calling Marcus Bachmann Gay”
Slate.com – “Dan Savage, Bully”

Don’t Stop Believing in a Hungry Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Carrie L. Kaufman) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:14:00 +0000

“Mom, what’s a hungry heart?”

Dixon asked me this a few days after Clarence Clemons died. We were in the kitchen, doing dishes and listening to an old interview with Clemons on the radio.

I looked at her, and marveled at how much more mature my children are at 8 than I was even at 18.

What’s a hungry heart?

I was introduced to rock n roll by my high school English teacher. Her premise, I believe, was to open up the world of poetry through the contemporary lyrics kids listened to every day on the radio. Her premise for our class—which I will admit was filled with a bunch of nerds—was to show us that John Donne was as much of a star in his time as Bruce Springsteen was in ours. Problem is, she first had to teach quite a few of us who Bruce Springsteen was. This was before Springsteen became a mainstream, top 40 idol, but after he had captured the hearts of true music lovers.

A couple of years later I was at Brandeis University near Boston, an eye opening experience for a girl from Las Vegas. Before we were all so connected, culture was as different from one side of America to the other as we were from England or Spain. Springsteen was a god to all of my Long Island and New Jersey classmates. I liked... Journey. And ELO. And the Little River Band. But I—green as green can be, with a slower pace and an unfamiliarity with such familiar East Coast things as fried dough—was seen as an oddity. Probably didn’t help that I was still unsure of my sexuality. And, despite the efforts of my high school teacher, I stuck to the music I liked.

This did not go over well.

One day in the cafeteria, a pinched-face kid named Keith implied sarcastically that there was something lacking in me because of my music preferences. I dumped my Coke on his head.

“Mom, what’s a hungry heart?”

“Well, everybody hungers for something,” I answered.

“You mean like love and power?” Dixon said.

I looked at her.

“Yes. Love, power and money are the three things most people hunger for, to some degree or another. We also hunger to be accepted; to be validated.”

“What’s ‘validated’?”

“’Validated’ is...

I concentrated on the pot I was scrubbing.

“’Validated’ is acknowledging someone’s existence. It’s the feeling that the things you do matter. That YOU matter.”

“Do you hunger to be validated?”

“I suppose I do, to a degree. I hunger to change the world, to make the world a better place.”

“But you already do make the world a better place. You’re nice to people. You love people. You recycle. You volunteer...”

She petered out, looked at me and shrugged, as if to say, “Isn’t that obvious mom?”

And I looked at her and said, “And I have two amazing children who seem to be wiser than I am.”

She smiled, and walked out of the room, humming a song she had learned from “Glee.”

“Don’t stop. Believin’. Hold on to that fee-elin’...”