Author: Jenny

Like a magpie, I've always been drawn to things that have sparkle, from rhinestone-embellished housewares to gold lamé get-ups in second-hand stores or beetles whose metallic armors reflect in the sun. But in my interactions with the world, oh, how I can fixate on the not-sparkly stuff: ill-timed traffic lights, a web page that won't load, the impolite server. Post-pandemic, I took to saying, "Everything's broken, and nothing works." It's not good for the soul, and as a lifelong writer, I've noticed it's also not good for creativity. This blog is about redirecting my attention to what's good in the world -- seeking and finding joy in the same way I notice sparkly objects around me -- and writing about it. There is an old nursery rhyme about magpies, "One for Sorrow," which tells us a solitary magpie symbolizes sorrow, but two magpies symbolize joy. This blog is about looking harder for the good stuff. Here's to finding those second magpies.

Not Done Yet: The You Your Kids Haven’t Met Yet (from the Momplex Blog archives)

January 24, 2014February 27, 2023 Jenny2 Comments

My living room walls are painted the color of old Coors cans. It’s a sort of muted golden yellow. I didn’t even realize I’d chosen Coors yellow until this week, when I got to feeling sappy about my childhood. The walls have been that color for five years. How could I miss the connection?

Coors Banquet Beer made regular appearances at my parents’ neighborhood barbecues when I was a little kid. And I can still almost taste the sweat I’d swipe off the cold ones, freshly popped by my dad and other mutton-chopped men, after golf tournaments in the crusty mining town we called home. They’d scoop them with their gloved hands out of ice barrels near the patio where their scores were posted. I can still hear the hot locusts buzzing as I sat cross-legged in a shady spot watching them, my hair smelling like chlorine and the sun-blistered skin on my shoulders starting to peel. I liked being there around all the dads. They looked mighty high on their low handicaps and tossing back those Coors.

I don’t remember my mom drinking beer, even though she’s the one out of my two parents who will indulge in a cold one now and again. “I never really was a drinker,” I’ve heard my dad say. I can’t argue with that. Knowing how memories go, there were probably just a few backyard barbecues and not nearly so many sweaty Coors cans as I like to imagine. We fudge our childhood memories a lot, maybe more than we think. And some of us take a longer time than others to realize it wasn’t all about us.

I spent this past Saturday in a primitive little hilltop cabin for a quiet getaway with my mom. We had no electricity or running water. The bathroom was an outhouse about 30 feet from the cabin. Snow was up to our knees in some spots, and we had only a wood-burning stove to warm our food. We took little hikes and naps and read quietly from our books. We ate homemade chicken-noodle soup and salad by candlelight and corked a bottle of wine using a shoe and a steak knife. (By God, we were going to open that #%$&* bottle!) At night we curled up together in a loft bed and talked. In the morning we chatted and giggled before heading out to build a snowman and then stab the snow with so many pretty icicles, it looked like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

Wait, I think I'm overstating the awesomeness of what we created. (Source: Wodumedia.com) — Wait, I think I’m overstating the awesomeness of what we created. (Source: Wodumedia.com)

None of this was the elemental thing of it all. No, the whole point, for me, was discovering that my childhood version of my mom wasn’t the “real” her.

My mom stayed home taking care of my sister and me for a long time. She and my dad were close friends with several couples that also had kids, and when we congregated, there was drinking and loudness and so much hilarity, the kids running wild and staying up a little too late and all of us playing games of badminton or cards. We were happy and nuts. I can still see my mom laughing and smiling in all these scenes.

When I was in college, she started to change. In fact, though she’s always been an angel to others, over the years, she’s become almost obsessive about helping the elderly, the mentally ill, the poor, animals—just everyone and everything that breaks your heart. Her latest thing is the fight against human trafficking. Sometimes talking with her is depressing. “Mom, I’m sorry. I know you think some of these death stories are sweet,” I remember telling her when she was working with hospice, “but they just terrify me.” There is sadness all over the world, and she can’t just relax. Sometimes I just wish she’d be her old self. I miss the real her.

But as we talked this weekend and I told her how much I hate these Wisconsin winters that I was never cut out to endure, she said this: “Imagine that you’re sitting behind our old house in Arizona, and it’s 100 degrees out, and the LAWN has just been put in—a lawn has been PUT IN—and you’re staring at the wall of dirt over you, where they’ve just cut through the earth so you can have a house, because they just did things like that. And flies are buzzing around your head, and you think, ‘This is where I live now, and I’m going to just live here for a long time, and this is it.’” She explained to me how she made a good life there, how she sought her friends and found ways to make it work, but the things that gave her days meaning were not the things I would have expected. It sure wasn’t the Coors banquet beer cans.

And that’s when it hit me, how blind I’ve been. I know good and well my kids don’t really know the whole me. They have no idea what a detour was taken when we decided to have them—before we moved to a town with polar vortexes that make me feel murderous. Before I quit my editing career to raise them. Before I put on stretch marks and wrinkles. Before I learned how to speak in whole G-rated paragraphs. Before I knew anything about time-outs or changing diapers or making sure homework gets done or shoveling snow or volunteering on school committees or teaching Sunday school—or, really, most of the things they’ll probably remember about me at this age. They have no idea that, like them, I’m not a finished product. There’s more than meets they eye. I’m still becoming something, and I may become many more somethings before I’m done.

So, that pretty much tells you where my “real” mom went. She went to the cabin with me this past weekend. Turns out she’s been with me all along.

motherhood

Harder than You Think: Why Parents Can’t Shield Their Kids from Adult Material (from the Momplex Blog archives)

January 17, 2014February 27, 2023 Jenny2 Comments

I was a tween before the word tween was invented, back in the olden days before twerking and junior misses’ g-strings. My parents owned a thick dictionary with a red linen cover, and it contained all the language. When they weren’t watching, I pored over it, looking up various body parts and four-letter words. My sister and I couldn’t get enough of reading the definition of fart (“a flatus expelled through the anus,” in case you were wondering). We’d laugh sometimes until the point of producing exactly that. Reading words like anus with mine own eyes felt subversive, which at that age meant f-u-n.

Back then, cable TV wasn’t all that sophisticated. Even if you didn’t pay for premium channels, you could still sorta kinda watch them by crooking your head the right way and doing this magic-eye thing of hyperfocusing. I assume this is how pretty much everyone in my generation got their first glimpses at porn. The reception on That Channel—I’m not sure we even knew the word porn then—wasn’t snowy, and it didn’t make white noise. It was more like a black-and-white film you had to watch through moving water. The picture was still there, though fuzzy. You could make out some of the shapes. But it undulated, and your brain had scant time to piece together images before they shifted. Sometimes the top of the screen showed up at the bottom, and vice-versa. If you were determined enough, you could occasionally catch a glimpse of some forbidden body part. And you could definitely hear the moaning.

I’m not sure, but I think That Channel and the red dictionary were the sum of all the dirty stuff my parents had to protect my sister and me from within our own home. And as you can gather, they failed miserably—as all of my friends’ parents did. It is, of course, natural for kids to be curious about these things. Unfortunately, today there is so much more than one fuzzy channel and an unabridged dictionary to fend off. So, I have low tolerance for people who think it’s easy to preserve children’s innocence, if only we lazy parents would try. As one would expect, pretty much 100 percent of people touting this view aren’t presently raising small children. And pretty much 100 percent of them are wrong. Folks, shielding kids from NSFW material is like trying to keep all your hair in a ponytail during a typhoon.

I try very hard to protect my kids from stumbling into the dark parts of the adult world. Very hard. But I feel outgunned. Even networks like ABC Family—talk about a misnomer—advertise provocative programming at times when little eyes and ears are obviously in the audience. Don’t even get me started on Charter’s On Demand. Nearly every time I’ve gone to that menu, there’s a zombie, shooting, exorcism, steamy sex scene, or other R-rated thing happening in the picture-in-picture box that I can’t for the love of Mike hide fast enough while we quick try to choose a kids’ movie. I stopped using On Demand for that reason, but guess what? My parents still use it. And since they raised children during a time of red-linen dictionaries and That Channel, they don’t have the 24/7 media-vigilance mentality it takes for child-rearing in these times.

I keep my radio tuned to XM Kids. If I don’t—and I know this from experience—when we start up the car, the first thing we’ll hear is some song about sticking this stuff in her stuff while he does that stuff to your stuff, or some horrible news story about death, rape, or destruction.

I can’t even let the kids stand near me when I’m looking up things on the Internet. Sure, I turn on Safe Search and lock it. No, it doesn’t stay locked, because you know, sometimes a grown lady’s got to look up things that have the word vagina in them. If I forget to re-do the settings, or if I log out and log back into Google, all bets are off. Yes, I’ve tried apps and software designed to keep the ‘net and iPad G-rated when in use by the kids. Not a one of them have ben foolproof. Close but not perfect.

My son heard me using Google Voice on the iPad recently. We had fun looking up the solar system and cheetahs. But yesterday as he was playing a game app, I heard his little voice say, “Okay, Google,” and I reflexively snagged that iPad faster than you can say, “CRAZY MOM.” After I turned on Safe Search AGAIN and locked it AGAIN, he said, “Okay, Google. ROAR VIDEO.” He loves the song “Roar” by Katy Perry. Know what Google thought he said? Whore video.

Right next to us, my daughter was waiting to download a song from iTunes on my laptop. I told her to wait for me, and she did, but geez, I’m not trying to raise her Amish. I let her do the search while I watched over her shoulder. She wanted to find “Brave” by Sara Bareilles, which says, “I want to see you be brave” in the refrain. Not knowing the name of the song, she just started typing, “I want to se…” Google quickly suggested the auto-fill “I want to sex you up.” Super close, Google. Thanks.

A few weeks ago, we were at a party with family friends. I didn’t realize my daughter’s friend had an old iPhone with Internet access until my daughter ran out of a room saying, “We have to show you this funny song we just saw. I think it’s on a site called Beaver Fever.” I stopped her before she could finish typing in the words. Ummm, yeah. I don’t think so. Her friend’s parents didn’t realize safe search wasn’t on. (And believe me you, they don’t want their kids seeing search results related to beaver fevers either.)

This isn’t half the story. I can’t even tell you all the measures I’ve taken. My point is, those who think it’s easy for parents to keep their kids away from porn and violence, try this for a day: Try going about everyday tasks of life and noticing how many times you see or hear sexual or violent material. Our society is fooling itself if we continue to believe a parent has the power to keep children innocent of the sex and violence that lurk in every dark corner. We don’t, not with the Internet. Especially not with the Internet. Want to know what the fourth most popular search term is on my blog? It’s “toddler’s penis.” The fifth is “little kids private parts.” (Mommy bloggers, if you haven’t done so already, take stock of pictures you’ve posted of your kids on your blog, and of the search terms people are using to find you. Might be time to clean house.)

I know I’m not the first parent to yearn for the innocence of a time gone by. But I do believe I’m in a generation of parents who might need to do more than yearn for it. I’ve kind of had enough of this crap. Parents are outgunned. Kids need to be kids. I just don’t know what to do about it.

Any ideas?

[Note to parents: Here’s Google’s quick 411 on how to set up Safe Search on your browser.]

career · happiness · intentional happiness · motherhood · Past life · preschoolers · writing

See that Mountain? Redefining Glory Days (from the Momplex Blog archives)

January 9, 2014February 27, 2023 Jenny7 Comments

The month before I graduated college, one of my writing professors approached me to ask if the university’s English department could use my senior writing portfolio as a model for future classes. She said it was one of the best she’d ever seen. My sophomore year, there was some sort of essay-on-demand writing-proficiency exam required for all sophomores, and my graded essay came back with a letter saying it was so good, the grader had stopped the rest of the judges to listen to it read aloud. True stories.

My husband and I used to be cemetery fanatics. This one, from Savanna, was always one of my favorites. It was next to the husband's headstone, which was about 10 feet high and inscribed with every freaking thing he'd ever done or joined. Go ahead. Click on it. Behold the last line of the epitaph. That's what I call honest. Makes her husband look like a narcissistic wiener. — My husband and I used to be cemetery fanatics. This headstone, from Savanna, Georgia, was always one of my favorites. It was next to the husband’s headstone, which was about 10 feet high and inscribed with every freaking thing he’d ever done or joined. Go ahead. Click on it. Behold the last line of the epitaph. That’s what I call honest. Makes her husband look like a narcissistic wiener.

I think about these experiences sometimes, mostly how they make me feel (and sound) like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite: “See that mountain over there? What do you want to bet I can throw this football over it?” He takes his bite of pan-fried steak, his hairpiece glistening, and, oh, it’s such a pathetic sight. I guess I’ll take comfort in knowing I’ve done a few things between my supposed glory days and my current life.

It’s been about 15 years since I graduated from college. Before I even turned my tassle, I was working at a small educational publishing company as its managing editor. Since, I’ve worked from coast to coast. I’ve been a newspaper editor where Southern hog farmers and retired Yankees are fighting the final, fizzling skirmishes of the Civil War. I was the editor for the largest private-equity research firm in the Northwest, on the receiving end of a nana-nana-boo-boo letter from Bill Gates’ dad about a typo he found in a report I edited. (Yes, the rich and famous are just like us!) I’ve been a stringer for public radio. I’ve coordinated publications for the National Endowment for Democracy, where I got to meet some incredible champions of freedom, like escapees of North Korean forced-labor camps, survivors of rape warfare in the Congo, and one Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. More recently, I received a Pushcart Prize special mention and wrote a book. See that mountain over there?

Let’s be real. I haven’t landed among the stars, at least not the ones anyone expected. To quote a former classmate of mine from my 15-year high school reunion, a guy with something like 17 children and enough ATVs to entertain them all, “I thought you were going to go somewhere, be something big, like a lawyer or a doctor.” To boot, that was said during all the aforementioned accomplishments. He didn’t even know I was about to become what I am now.

These days, I am a mom and a wife in a Wisconsin home with a loud dishwasher that is making it hard for me to think as I type. My day went like this: shower, wake up the kids, make lunches, wake up husband, wake up the kids again, dry hair, wake up the kids again, make breakfast, search for kids’ socks, diffuse tantrum over socks not being fresh from the dryer, replace said socks with better-fitting socks, search for snow boots, drive kids to school, go to work, blog for a camera company, blog for a jeweler, pick up kids, go grocery shopping, miss yoga, make enchiladas, watch eldest pick onions out of enchiladas, go to science fair, do bedtime, and finally, sweet finally, watch some Modern Family. What can I say? I have two kids and came this close—this close—to choking a passive-aggressive, competitive parent tonight at a school science expo in a cafeteria, where the fluorescent lights no doubt showed off the greasy child-sized fingerprints on my glasses. Every day, I am so much more tired at the end than I intended to be at the beginning. Yes, I have #firstworldproblems. But, God, I love my family so much more than I ever loved anything I ever wrote. There’s that. No, there really is that.

Sometimes I’m plagued by the thought that I have not become what I could become. There are still little voices telling me I thought you would be a big deal. This is when I have to remind myself that life is longer than 15 years between college and now. What am I? Dead? It is no small deal raising children well while still becoming who you were meant to be. In fact, in my case, the two are inextricably related. And so I do my best. I march down from curing the hiccups, negotiating over cold or hot lunch, doing so many endless experiments with baking soda, and I try to turn on that thing—that magic thing—that’s still somewhere in there. Usually I can’t find it. It’s so hard to create beauty when you’re exhausted. In the end, I believe this isn’t a choice I have to make right now. I believe the writing will keep. My kids will grow up and move away, for we all know childhood’s fleeting. But the writing will keep.