1969: the Summer of Love. 2009: the Summer of Loss.
This has really been a crappy summer for people. As a community, an American civilization specifically, we've lost a number of genuine icons - people who defined a generation, a genre, or a Government. This summer has seen the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, John Hughes, Les Paul, Walter Cronkite, and now today, Ted Kennedy. And there are others, and my apologies to them - the list is getting too long to keep track in my tiny little brain. These names are not small-time celebrities who had their 15 minutes of fame. They were genuine contributors to society in some substantial way, sharing their incredible gifts with us. The world genuinely feels loss with each departure, and we're a poorer place for the loss.
For me, those celebrity passings have been a sort of symbol of what has gone on at a much more personal level. This summer has also seen the death of two great friends of my family - Betty Tufts and Derl Weikel. Both were genuinely good people, beloved by those who had the privilege to know them, and stricken with cancer that stole them from us much too soon. I have been enriched by their presence in my life, and I am deeply and irrevocably saddened by their deaths.
I am grateful to still have my parents, my sister, my husband, and his mother and siblings still with us (and of course my children, but I prefer to think of them as too young to mention in this context). I admit to guilt for feeling relief that these losses, profound as they've been, have been someone else's mother, brother, or spouse. I also recognize, more vividly than ever, that this is the cycle of life; death is inescapable, inevitable, and in a way, therefore no more noteworthy than any other event.
But it still hurts.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
I Blame Archie Bunker
That said, television hasn't been altogether good for me, and not in the way you might think.
It's not that I watch too much (although I do) when I should be doing other things, or that I don't do the things I should do instead, like read. It's that it's taught me a very bad habit: sarcasm. Worse, these days it's downright snarkiness. And while that may be very entertaining on TV, I'm finally learning that as a component of personal relationships - to wit, my marriage - it's really not entertaining at all. In fact, it's downright damaging.
If there's one thing I wish my husband and I could change in our relationship, it's the way we talk to each other, and to some degree, our kids. Mind you, we're not nasty. I recall being with a good friend, her husband, and child several years ago, and when my friend asked their then 3-year-old what Daddy's name was, specifically, what Mommy called Daddy, the child responded, "Joooooooo-ooohhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnn!"* in precisely the same whiny, nagging tone that my friend routinely used. My friend laughed hysterically; I was mortified. This child was learning that people disrespect each other, because her parents found that perfectly acceptable in their own relationship. (For the record, they are now divorced. Shocker.) It's not nearly that bad at my house. We aren't openly awful to each other, per se. But disrespectful? Well...yeah, at times.
My husband and I play to an audience, much the way TV characters do. When Archie's making fun of Edith, he's clearly doing so for the benefit of the laughter of the studio audience, even without looking directly at the camera. Hubby and I are similarly smart, witty people who are generally intolerant of stupidity and quite proud of our respective abilities to make others laugh with just the lift of an eyebrow. The problem is, there's no audience here - except our children.
And we both know we do it, and we both know, I think, that we shouldn't. We aren't kind and generous in spirit to each other, which is how I wish we could bring ourselves to be. Granted, if we were too kum-by-ah all the time, it would be boring as heck around here, and we don't want that either. Still, do we need to be Chandler-esque in our repartee every single conversation? Is it necessary to always say, "were you gonna just leave the dirty dishes for me to do?" instead of "would you help me with these dishes before you go?" After years of not only watching countless hours of bad habit-inducing television programs but practicing those habits on our friends and coworker (who find it considerably more amusing, no doubt because they only have to hear it a few hours a day), we're finding it hard to speak to each other any other way, even though we both sense that it's probably not doing us any good in the long run.
We must do better, but how? Do we start practicing yoga and listening to Deepak Chopra CDs? How do become kinder and gentler, and stop feeling the need to get a cheap laugh - from a nonexistent audience? I try, I really do, but then the opportunity to get a really good one in comes up and, well, it's back to Snarkland I go. Any suggestions? I want to do better, I'm just not really sure where to start.
It's not that I watch too much (although I do) when I should be doing other things, or that I don't do the things I should do instead, like read. It's that it's taught me a very bad habit: sarcasm. Worse, these days it's downright snarkiness. And while that may be very entertaining on TV, I'm finally learning that as a component of personal relationships - to wit, my marriage - it's really not entertaining at all. In fact, it's downright damaging.
If there's one thing I wish my husband and I could change in our relationship, it's the way we talk to each other, and to some degree, our kids. Mind you, we're not nasty. I recall being with a good friend, her husband, and child several years ago, and when my friend asked their then 3-year-old what Daddy's name was, specifically, what Mommy called Daddy, the child responded, "Joooooooo-ooohhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnn!"* in precisely the same whiny, nagging tone that my friend routinely used. My friend laughed hysterically; I was mortified. This child was learning that people disrespect each other, because her parents found that perfectly acceptable in their own relationship. (For the record, they are now divorced. Shocker.) It's not nearly that bad at my house. We aren't openly awful to each other, per se. But disrespectful? Well...yeah, at times.
My husband and I play to an audience, much the way TV characters do. When Archie's making fun of Edith, he's clearly doing so for the benefit of the laughter of the studio audience, even without looking directly at the camera. Hubby and I are similarly smart, witty people who are generally intolerant of stupidity and quite proud of our respective abilities to make others laugh with just the lift of an eyebrow. The problem is, there's no audience here - except our children.
And we both know we do it, and we both know, I think, that we shouldn't. We aren't kind and generous in spirit to each other, which is how I wish we could bring ourselves to be. Granted, if we were too kum-by-ah all the time, it would be boring as heck around here, and we don't want that either. Still, do we need to be Chandler-esque in our repartee every single conversation? Is it necessary to always say, "were you gonna just leave the dirty dishes for me to do?" instead of "would you help me with these dishes before you go?" After years of not only watching countless hours of bad habit-inducing television programs but practicing those habits on our friends and coworker (who find it considerably more amusing, no doubt because they only have to hear it a few hours a day), we're finding it hard to speak to each other any other way, even though we both sense that it's probably not doing us any good in the long run.
We must do better, but how? Do we start practicing yoga and listening to Deepak Chopra CDs? How do become kinder and gentler, and stop feeling the need to get a cheap laugh - from a nonexistent audience? I try, I really do, but then the opportunity to get a really good one in comes up and, well, it's back to Snarkland I go. Any suggestions? I want to do better, I'm just not really sure where to start.
And Another Thing...
And on that happy note: if I have to listen to one more pedagogical lecture on the dangers of children watching television, I am going to lose it. When are we going to learn that it isn't THAT kids watch television, it's all about context?
I watched TV as a kid. I watched a LOT of TV as a kid, especially the older I got. You know what?I am a functioning member of society. I am not out climbing Everest, but I'm not a total slacker either. I can hold a job, I am both well-educated and well-read, and I am fairly socially adept as well, in no small part because I am able to carry on a conversation about not only the mundanities of the political landscape in America but the fact that Seals and Kroft's Saturday mornings shows were clearly the result of somebody's acid trip.
It isn't about keeping kids from watching TV. It's about:
- not letting the TV be the all-day-long babysitter for your children (tempting as it is);
- knowing what your children are watching, and ensuring that the content is both age-appropriate and educational (e.g., Sesame Street has enriched both my children's language skills more than I ever could have, in spite of all the books we read together; The Teletubbies, by contrast, are forbidden in this house as they have no redeeming educational value whatsoever, nonsensically baby-talking their way through mind-numbing non-adventures);
- knowing when to turn the TV off, and not apologizing to your kids for doing it.
I watched a lot of TV, but my mother also made sure that I watched Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and not soap operas and game shows. On nice days, she forced me to go play outside. She limited the amount of time I could spend in front of the TV, even on rainy days. Consequently, although I watched TV, I also had a healthy imagination, learned to love reading, and could happily entertain myself for hours on end without the aid of the boob tube.
In the meantime, I learned to read a newspaper and watch a nightly newscast. I have a graduate degree, but I've learned more from watching Jeopardy than I probably retained from fully half of my college courses. There's no question I enjoy unwinding by aimlessly watching some bubble-gum kid-friendly flick like Enchanted or The Princess Diaries, but I'm also fully engaged by Clive Cussler novels, Vaclav Havel's memoir To the Castle and Back, and the Sunday Post. So, do my kids watch TV? YOU BETCHA.
I watched TV as a kid. I watched a LOT of TV as a kid, especially the older I got. You know what?I am a functioning member of society. I am not out climbing Everest, but I'm not a total slacker either. I can hold a job, I am both well-educated and well-read, and I am fairly socially adept as well, in no small part because I am able to carry on a conversation about not only the mundanities of the political landscape in America but the fact that Seals and Kroft's Saturday mornings shows were clearly the result of somebody's acid trip.
It isn't about keeping kids from watching TV. It's about:
- not letting the TV be the all-day-long babysitter for your children (tempting as it is);
- knowing what your children are watching, and ensuring that the content is both age-appropriate and educational (e.g., Sesame Street has enriched both my children's language skills more than I ever could have, in spite of all the books we read together; The Teletubbies, by contrast, are forbidden in this house as they have no redeeming educational value whatsoever, nonsensically baby-talking their way through mind-numbing non-adventures);
- knowing when to turn the TV off, and not apologizing to your kids for doing it.
I watched a lot of TV, but my mother also made sure that I watched Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and not soap operas and game shows. On nice days, she forced me to go play outside. She limited the amount of time I could spend in front of the TV, even on rainy days. Consequently, although I watched TV, I also had a healthy imagination, learned to love reading, and could happily entertain myself for hours on end without the aid of the boob tube.
In the meantime, I learned to read a newspaper and watch a nightly newscast. I have a graduate degree, but I've learned more from watching Jeopardy than I probably retained from fully half of my college courses. There's no question I enjoy unwinding by aimlessly watching some bubble-gum kid-friendly flick like Enchanted or The Princess Diaries, but I'm also fully engaged by Clive Cussler novels, Vaclav Havel's memoir To the Castle and Back, and the Sunday Post. So, do my kids watch TV? YOU BETCHA.
Everything in Moderation - Even Hedonism
I was absolutely inspired for this one after reading (yet another) series of articles and editorials in various parenting magazines tauting the virtues of protecting children from any and all exposure to sunlight. Recommendations included not only generous slathering of sunscreen, but my personal favorite: having children wear - and I am not making this up - high-necked, long-sleeved and long-legged brightly colored or dark (because white isn't protective enough) clothing - in the summertime, on the beach, when it is presumably about 95 degrees.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Look, I don't dispute that skin cancers are both dangerous and on the rise. And I don't believe it's fair to my children to send them out at noon every day, carelessly shunning sunscreen in favor of a good burn so they'll get a nice "base." But covering every inch of their little bods on a hot day when the whole point of going to a beach is to ENJOY THE SUN? No. I am drawing the line in the sand, my friends.
Let's have a little perspective, eh? For every woman profiled in the article on skin cancer, there are dozens of us who have spent hours in the sun playing outdoors as kids, who even with a sunburn or two in our history have no evidence of skin cancer. That doesn't mean we're immune, it just means that the statistics tend to only highlight the worst case scenarios, not the millions of people who turned out just fine. Each of those skin cancer victims, I might add, confessed to having been a sun bunny, a tanning-bed fanatic, or an otherwise tan-addicted sun-worshipper who went out of her way to get UV exposure throughout her youth. And that means I should ensure my children look like "Powder"? I am not going to risk heat stroke by putting my child in a dark blue turtleneck just to protect him from the sun. Puh-lease.
Once again, it's not about abstinence, folks, it's about moderation. Children need protection, true, but they also need sunlight. There are an increasing number of medical studies now pointing to the dangers of depriving kids of sunlight altogether. Vitamin D deficiencies are just one of several important side effects of sun-shunning, but they illustrate the point nicely: one extreme can be just as deadly as the other in the long run.
I put sunscreen on the kids when I know we'll be out in the sun for a long time. (And yes, overcast days count, but when we're going to be outdoors in a primarily shaded area, no, I don't bother.) We go to the beach from 9:00 to about 11:00 or so, then come back inside for lunch and a nap during the peak UV hours, returning (if we're so inclined) in the late afternoon when it's just as sunny and fun, but less dangerous. We don't go out of our way to be in the sun just for the sake of sunning ourselves, but we don't hide inside either. We will teach them, as they grow older, to be responsible about the sun and that tanning beds and tans are not smart. But that's it. Beyond that, it's not precaution, it's panic-induced paranoia. Children need to have a life, and that life includes time in the sun to just be kids. Otherwise, we risk having them turn into housebound, overweight, video-game-addicted couch potatoes...oh, wait...
ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Look, I don't dispute that skin cancers are both dangerous and on the rise. And I don't believe it's fair to my children to send them out at noon every day, carelessly shunning sunscreen in favor of a good burn so they'll get a nice "base." But covering every inch of their little bods on a hot day when the whole point of going to a beach is to ENJOY THE SUN? No. I am drawing the line in the sand, my friends.
Let's have a little perspective, eh? For every woman profiled in the article on skin cancer, there are dozens of us who have spent hours in the sun playing outdoors as kids, who even with a sunburn or two in our history have no evidence of skin cancer. That doesn't mean we're immune, it just means that the statistics tend to only highlight the worst case scenarios, not the millions of people who turned out just fine. Each of those skin cancer victims, I might add, confessed to having been a sun bunny, a tanning-bed fanatic, or an otherwise tan-addicted sun-worshipper who went out of her way to get UV exposure throughout her youth. And that means I should ensure my children look like "Powder"? I am not going to risk heat stroke by putting my child in a dark blue turtleneck just to protect him from the sun. Puh-lease.
Once again, it's not about abstinence, folks, it's about moderation. Children need protection, true, but they also need sunlight. There are an increasing number of medical studies now pointing to the dangers of depriving kids of sunlight altogether. Vitamin D deficiencies are just one of several important side effects of sun-shunning, but they illustrate the point nicely: one extreme can be just as deadly as the other in the long run.
I put sunscreen on the kids when I know we'll be out in the sun for a long time. (And yes, overcast days count, but when we're going to be outdoors in a primarily shaded area, no, I don't bother.) We go to the beach from 9:00 to about 11:00 or so, then come back inside for lunch and a nap during the peak UV hours, returning (if we're so inclined) in the late afternoon when it's just as sunny and fun, but less dangerous. We don't go out of our way to be in the sun just for the sake of sunning ourselves, but we don't hide inside either. We will teach them, as they grow older, to be responsible about the sun and that tanning beds and tans are not smart. But that's it. Beyond that, it's not precaution, it's panic-induced paranoia. Children need to have a life, and that life includes time in the sun to just be kids. Otherwise, we risk having them turn into housebound, overweight, video-game-addicted couch potatoes...oh, wait...
Monday, August 03, 2009
Talking Myself Down Off The Ledge
WHY do I let myself be bothered by these things???
A truly inconsequential man who relishes being obstinate and unpleasant has insinuated himself into my role on a project. Now, this would be perfectly good reason to get ticked off - IF. IF I were in the job full-time; IF I actually felt threatened that his doing so would in some way reflect on my capability or ability to keep my job; IF I actually cared about my ongoing relationship with this man (or the company, for that matter). But I don't. And so, for the life of me, I can't figure out why I let it get me all a-twitter, and why I've now got a headache from worrying about it.
The truth is, I am just irritated because it's him. If the other person who shares my role were to have said, "You know, I'm going to do this one," I would've said, "Okay." Because frankly, I'm going on vacation next week anyway and the timing of this would've worked out fine to hand it off to someone else and just be a bit player. But it's THIS guy instead, and I just loathe the way he treats everyone, the way he condescends, and the fact that I know the only reason he's assumed control (without being asked, or consulting anyone), is because he just plain doesn't like me or the other person in the job and always thinks he can do better without us (which, for the record, is absolutely not true - and I am not just tooting my own horn here; ask anyone).
And even though I spent a lot of brainpower mulling over whether or not this will signal the end of my working relationship with this company, I know that it won't - or at least that it doesn't have to. It is ONE project that he has particular interest in and therefore sees fit to insert himself in, and the reality is that he cannot do what I do, and the other person in the role needs and wants my support (at least for now ), so there is no reason to think I'm out the door. But I'm bothered because he wants to diminish my role, relegate me to something I have long since outgrown doing given my work history, education, and past role. I am merely being proud; the reality is that I should be thinking, "you want to pay me this much money to do something you could pay a $10/hour intern to do? ROCK ON!" But instead, I'm being obstinate and peevish because I am LETTING HIM GET TO ME. I hate that I am letting him get to me.
So, I am going to try very hard to take the Zen approach to my upcoming conference call. I am going to say, "whatever, dude, knock yourself out." I am going to be grateful to have it off my plate so I can rest easy on my vacation, and know that I will be billing them like an attorney (you e-mailed me? That 30-second response is a 15-minute billable increment...) for something that is completely beneath me, but hey, was their call. Wish me luck.
A truly inconsequential man who relishes being obstinate and unpleasant has insinuated himself into my role on a project. Now, this would be perfectly good reason to get ticked off - IF. IF I were in the job full-time; IF I actually felt threatened that his doing so would in some way reflect on my capability or ability to keep my job; IF I actually cared about my ongoing relationship with this man (or the company, for that matter). But I don't. And so, for the life of me, I can't figure out why I let it get me all a-twitter, and why I've now got a headache from worrying about it.
The truth is, I am just irritated because it's him. If the other person who shares my role were to have said, "You know, I'm going to do this one," I would've said, "Okay." Because frankly, I'm going on vacation next week anyway and the timing of this would've worked out fine to hand it off to someone else and just be a bit player. But it's THIS guy instead, and I just loathe the way he treats everyone, the way he condescends, and the fact that I know the only reason he's assumed control (without being asked, or consulting anyone), is because he just plain doesn't like me or the other person in the job and always thinks he can do better without us (which, for the record, is absolutely not true - and I am not just tooting my own horn here; ask anyone).
And even though I spent a lot of brainpower mulling over whether or not this will signal the end of my working relationship with this company, I know that it won't - or at least that it doesn't have to. It is ONE project that he has particular interest in and therefore sees fit to insert himself in, and the reality is that he cannot do what I do, and the other person in the role needs and wants my support (at least for now ), so there is no reason to think I'm out the door. But I'm bothered because he wants to diminish my role, relegate me to something I have long since outgrown doing given my work history, education, and past role. I am merely being proud; the reality is that I should be thinking, "you want to pay me this much money to do something you could pay a $10/hour intern to do? ROCK ON!" But instead, I'm being obstinate and peevish because I am LETTING HIM GET TO ME. I hate that I am letting him get to me.
So, I am going to try very hard to take the Zen approach to my upcoming conference call. I am going to say, "whatever, dude, knock yourself out." I am going to be grateful to have it off my plate so I can rest easy on my vacation, and know that I will be billing them like an attorney (you e-mailed me? That 30-second response is a 15-minute billable increment...) for something that is completely beneath me, but hey, was their call. Wish me luck.
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