Sweet Home Alabama

A few days ago we left our cozy home in California for a two-week trip to Alabama. I had a work conference here, and our plan was to parlay the business trip into a family vacation to visit my in-laws, who live outside of Birmingham. From the get-go, I had a couple of reservations about this trip, the first hurdle being that I absolutely loathe flying. Actually, it’s not so much a dislike, as it is unadulterated terror. People are always trying to convince me that the statistics are in my favor, I’m in more danger driving down to the corner store, yadda yadda yadda, but my suspicion is that humans are not meant to dwell in the air for any period of time longer than it takes to complete a jumping jack, let alone eat peanuts and read People magazine up there. But I won’t linger on this subject – I’m far too superstitious to write much more about it, suffice it to say that at one point on the flight over, my 3-year-old said to me, “Just relax already, Mama.” I was able to forget about my terror for a few moments while I contemplated the humiliation of being mocked a preschooler, so that was nice.

My second reservation about the trip was that the South and I don’t appear to make good companions. I feel out of place here. Too mouthy, too liberal, too unpolished, too gauche. I’m not a make-up-before-breakfast type. I’m hardly a make-up-at-all type, and something about being around all this gentility makes me feel crass. I understand a lot of this is my own prejudice, and I try to keep it in check; bigotry is bigotry, even (especially?) when it’s coming from an enlightened Californian – a concept that’s not lost on me. But when I’m constantly referred to as “The Eye-talian” and have to claim residence for 14 days in an entirely dry county, my misanthropic side starts to show.

So I was already a little edgy about this trip when the tornado sirens went off at 4:30 am on a Wednesday morning. I bolted upright in bed, trying to get my bearings, and my first reflex was to grab the kids and dive under a table, until I remembered where we were. The ground doesn’t open up here, like it does at home. And if it’s not a warning from the earth, it’s a warning from sky. We were still in the hotel where my work conference would be held later that day, and the emergency crews were in full swing; I was utterly confused for a period of time, thinking we were evacuating due to a fire in the building, and it wasn’t until we were ushered into a tornado-safe room on the lower floor of the hotel that I snapped to. The kids were in their pajamas, bleary-eyed and surprisingly blasé about their first emergency evacuation, almost just annoyed to be packed like sardines in a stuffy room with a bunch of strangers. My husband, used to the tornado drill from his childhood here, was indifferent to the proceedings, and wouldn’t realize until later how significant this event would be. I kept an eye on him, calm as long as he was calm, and was completely aware of the fact that there, in that room, I was meeting a lot of my clients for the first time in my pajamas without a bra.

After not too long, we were sent back to our rooms, and the thrum of the day was relaxed by breakfast time. The conference proceeded and Kirk and the kids planned to follow through with their plans to bum around Birmingham while I worked, until someone, somewhere, noticed a green tinge to the sky outside and turned on the giant TV monitors in the conference hall. More tornadoes. A few of them.  One, in particular, touched down in not-too-far Tuscaloosa and made its way toward Birmingham. The news described the storm as miles wide, and on TV, it looked like an animal descending from the sky eating everything in its path; like God reached down and swept his hand across the earth, sending houses of cards into the air. The footage showed clearly the debris being kicked up on the periphery – trees, parts of buildings, cars. Elsewhere in the hotel, Kirk rushed the kids back to the room and packed an emergency backpack with shoes, water and the energy bars we coincidentally brought with us on the plane. The next few hours, we watched and waited, and tried to get in touch with family. The storm passed by us, but not over us, and we were awash in guilty relief.

By the time we connected with my brother-in-law (who would sweetly offer us a warm place to stay, now that Kirk’s parents’ house was uninhabitable), everyone in Birmingham was walking around in a daze. The look of shock on people’s faces reminded me of 9/11 – the utter disbelief and helplessness. At one of the few operating grocery stores in the area, people silently wept in the cracker aisle. A man grabbed my arm to tell me about how he had been trapped in a Home Depot in Fultondale when the tornado ripped the roof off, but he’d hung on to the brick foundation, thinking of his wife and daughters. I had no idea where Fultondale was, but I couldn’t bear to stop him. Outside, still, the once-towering steel freeway signs are bent in half like straws. The houses lining one side of the street sit looking peaceful, their counterparts on the other side of the street simply gone, replaced by wreckage and rubble. Shingles and insulation from nearby towns line the streets of my brother-in-law’s neighborhood; mail addressed to a house 50 miles away sits on the high school lawn.

Steel highway lights among uprooted trees.

Power and water were restored to Kirk’s parents’ house today, seven days earlier than expected, so here we sit, waiting for them to return from their road trip. We are cleaning up minor damage, clearing out fallen tree limbs, stocking up on bottled water.

Today is my husband’s birthday. Today I am thankful.

Rhymes with Dolores

Last night, as my 3-year-old daughter was changing into her jammies, post-bath, she ended up with her hands in her underpants, feeling all around down there. While you might find this a little jarring, this actually isn’t the point of my story. She does this all the time, lately. Like, a lot. It’s not even remarkable enough for me to comment on anymore, in and of itself, and as long as she doesn’t do it waiting in line at Whole Foods, I’ve gotten past the shock. If we’re being honest, once I confirmed this as a normal phase, I actually began to admire her dedication and loyalty to the task. I usually have a hard time following through with hobbies, myself. But I digress. The point of all this is that last night, in the middle of her foray, she paused. She looked up at me.  She tilted her head to one side, and then she upped the ante.

“Hey, Mommy – what’s this little guy?”

“Wha…uh, what little guy?”

“This little guy right in here. Like a button. What’s that guy do?”

Crap.

I mean, really? Three years old and we’re already here? I had the most open-minded, liberated mother on the face of the planet who lived to buy me books with titles like “All About Your Body” and then sit down and discuss each chapter over dinner, and even she didn’t broach this subject with me until I was 7. Six, at the very youngest.  But my daughter would not relent. She was not going to let me get away with cursory answers. It’s like she sensed there was a wealth of information to be had here, and that it would come into critical play at some stage of the game. She demanded to know what exact purpose it served, and what it was called.

So, seeing as how I swore to myself that I would never use cutesy made-up words for normal healthy, nothing-to-be-ashamed-of body parts, I supplied the correct, clinical term, assuming we’d then move on. But this discovery of a new word prompted a 10-minute back-and-forth of her trying it out, mispronouncing, and then demanding I say it again so she could try again to get it right. A solid 10 minutes of no dialogue, save that one word, being volleyed between the two of us while I tried desperately to keep a straight face each time I passed it back to her like a hot potato.

And here’s the thing: looking back on the moment, as silly as it might sound, I feel kind of proud of her. Even though she doesn’t realize the significance of her curiosity, in some way I feel like she’s called out her body as her own, taken charge of it, named it out loud and claimed stake. I think all moms of daughters understand how fragile this possession is. How, at some point, when they near 10, 11, 12, that claim can become tenuous and scary and slippery. On some level, I think we moms all fear that moment when our daughters hold out their hands in forfeit because someone else has told them what they have is not worth that much anyway. We know too well, because we have all been there. I know there will be a day when my daughter looks in the mirror and sees a reflection of none of the things I love about her and can plainly see with my own two eyes. Instead, uncertain and apologetic, she will see a fun-house reflection distorted by the slings and arrows of adolescence. All I can hope, as her mom, is that her time of discontent will be short, relenting to a fundamental self-esteem that her father and I are trying in earnest to nurture today. Because in most and in the best circumstances, they will come back around, these daughters of ours, as they grow older and relearn self-possession, remember that they create their own definitions of the world. And until I have to live through that struggle again, this time with the heavy love of a mother who understands that her child needs to learn her own life lessons, I will revel in watching my daughter dance in front of her mirror in unabashed self-adoration, and hearing her name her body out loud.

Look At Me.

So I’m starting a blog. A little late to the party, I guess. Just so we’re clear from the get-go, I want to let you know that this isn’t a “mom blog” in the strictest sense. Or a city blog or a work blog or a relationship blog. I guess what I’m here to write about is all of it. Just life.

I’m pretty new to this. Not just the blogging, per se, but the sharing. The assumption that you’re going to take time out of your day to read what I have to say. I’m not inherently the kind of person my husband likes to refer to as a “look at me.” I mean, I was a nervous wreck the day of my wedding, not because I was at all apprehensive about committing my life to another soul for all eternity, even despite said soul’s ridiculous obsession with video games, but because I just didn’t want all those people looking at me, for Pete’s sake. But as a full-time working mom of two trying to juggle it all, I’ve been feeling a bit jumbled lately, and I suppose I hope writing it all out will somehow make my thoughts a little more lucid. I think we can both be honest and admit that this is a little awkward so far. I mean, we don’t really know each other, and we’ve been thrown together here in this room to make small talk and hope we can find some genuine common ground before everyone loses interest. I’m not even sure I dressed appropriately for this party and I can already feel my palms starting to sweat from the nerves. But if you can bear with me for just a bit longer, maybe I’ll make a go of it all the same, and see how it shakes out.

Before we get started, I guess there are a few things you should know about me. I don’t know any famous people, I’ve traveled the world far less than I’d prefer, I don’t play in a band, and I’m not a spy. In other words, I lead a pretty ordinary life. Which is not to say that I don’t live in a constant state of amazement (and confusion), but if you’re looking for some hard-core shit, you might want to excuse yourself while you have the chance.

Which brings me to my next disclosures: I swear. Like a trucker. I’m great about reigning it in around the kids, but since we’re all adults here, I’d rather not worry about it, if it’s all the same to you.  Also, I have a lot of opinions about things some people say shouldn’t be discussed in polite company – like politics, God, childbirth and Angelina Jolie. So if you have any expectations of a certain level of propriety and reserve, I’m not sure you and I can ever truly be great friends. Please don’t take that the wrong way. It’s not you, it’s me.

The things I know for sure in life are that I love my husband and live for our 2 kids (ages 5 and 3), my mom is my rock, my job is killing me (probably literally), I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, and I would eat sushi every single day of my life if I could afford it and somehow avoid turning into Jeremy Piven.

So, maybe if you’ve got a spare minute to join me, we can make a deal that I’ll keep rambling for a little bit, and you have full permission to look on with that slight head tilt that conveys empathy and maybe a smidge of pity-slash-embarrassment. You don’t have to close down the bar, but you’re welcome to stay for as long as you’d like, as long as you buy me a drink before you level with me, and promise to tell me if I have something in my teeth.