Profound Alienation

Ah, the deep and profound alienation that comes from never having been young, yet living in a youth obsessed culture.

When I was nineteen, I had an argument with my friend Tim. Tim and I have always loved each other and rarely understood each other. I can't recall what he had either just done or was planning to do, but during a visit to my apartment, he said, "I'm going to be so embarrassed by this in a few years." Now, however, he was giddy about it.

You know the annoying kid who stands there yelling at all the other kids to get out of the makeshift go kart, rocket or whatever else they've built, because they'll hurt themselves? That was me. Tim was the kid who'd be building the vehicle and perching it on top of a steep hill.

"If you know it's stupid, and you know you're going to be embarrassed by it, why do it?" I wanted to know.

Tim looked at me as if the answer was obvious. "Because you have to do things; you have to experience life."

"And that means being stupid?

"At our age, yes."

That kind of thinking undid me. "That is the most ridiculous, age discriminatory thing I've ever heard!"

"Discriminatory? How do you figure?"

My turn to look as if things were self explanatory. "Because if someone older, like our parents, said that being our age meant being stupid, you'd be furious. You'd be telling them how wrong they were, and how hurtful it was to assume that we are idiots just because of our age. I know you would, because I've heard you do it."

"That's different."

"It is NO different!"

As usual, we argued for a few more minutes before we decided that it was just best to either change the subject or walk away. It was not the first, or the last, time we'd look at each other and say, "How can you think that?"

Yes, Tim is still my friend. I wasn't kidding when I said we loved each other anyway.

Meryl Streep, when asked how she felt about turning 40, once said, "Like I finally fit in my own skin. I was never young and fresh and dewy." I thought, "YEEESSSS!!!! Someone else 'gets' it."

As I finally started to fit into my own skin, my peers looked at themselves and said, "Who is this, and how did they get so old?" As 40 loomed, I wrote the following essay. I didn't say so, but I was wondering if there would come a time when people my age would understand me and vice versa. Five years later, I don't think so. I'll probably get in trouble in a few decades in my nursing home. Some man next to me will put in his teeth to say that he still feels like the high school quarterback, and in a fit of pique I'll beat him with my cane.

**************************

I'm sure that growing up the youngest in my family affected the way I feel about age. When you're constantly told that you're too little for this and too young for that, you wish in vain for the day when nobody says such things to you. It was especially frustrating when my older sister told me I was too young for something, and I pointed out that she hadn't thought so when she was my age. Her response was, "That's because I was too young and stupid to know the difference." It was maddening. She was all of 3 ½ years older than me – which, actually, was part of why she was so contentious. I wasn't seen as competition by my much older siblings, which was nice.

Part of it, too, was my parents' ages. On the day I was born, my dad was 56 and my mom was 36. My dad retired when I was eight months old. My mom turned 50 when I was in junior high. I knew they were older than my friends' parents; especially Dad. I just didn't think much of it. When I did, I usually found it odd that my friends' parents were so young. Sometimes, someone's grandparents would be younger than my dad, and I was puzzled. As a kid, your sense of "normal" comes from what you see every day. My dad was retired, my mom went to work, and I was an aunt in fifth grade. That was normal for me.

I'm sure my mom's attitude affected me, too. Mom is immensely practical and not given to vanity. Her age did not bother her, at least that I could see. She never lied about it, never complained about it, never obsessed over lines on her face. She didn't wear makeup or dye her hair. When her mother sent her Oil of Olay moisturizer ("because of that harsh, dry climate you live in,") she rolled her eyes and hardly ever used it. Near as I could tell, she didn't think about her age much. It simply existed, like the sky or the mountains.

Dad, on the other hand – Dad was terrified of aging. Part of that was fear of death. The thought of death absolutely undid him. He believed that your existence ended at death; no heaven, no pearly gates, no hell, no reincarnation – just nothing. That was unsettling in itself, but I don't think it wasn't the real issue. He'd been a coal miner, a railroad engineer, a police officer and a fireman – not exactly low risk occupations. When he talked about his years in law enforcement (which he seldom did in front of the kids, deeming the subject matter way over our heads), he would say that the two most dangerous calls were domestic disputes and bar brawls, with traffic stops being a very close second. Officers died all the time on those routine kinds of calls. He himself had had to face down men holding weapons on him. I learned about breaking bottles and using them as a makeshift knife from him. As a fire fighter, he'd been one of only two men willing to run into the burning jail and unlock the inmates so they could get out. I don't think risk or fear of dying was a really huge issue for most of his life. Of course, the older he got, the more it was, and I only knew him as a senior citizen.

The really big issue in aging for him was being helpless or irrelevant. He'd been a high school jock, a big man on campus. As an adult, he took on testosterone soaked jobs; jobs where he was physically strong and relied upon, jobs where he was often armed, jobs in which he alone was often the difference between life and death. Then, in his view very suddenly, he was no longer employed, overweight, slow, much weaker than he used to be. It scared him. Now instead of the rescuer, he fit the roll of victim. He began to fear that younger men could and would beat him up. He feared mugging and assault. He feared that someone would break into his home. He feared being seen as a target. He also feared that now he was just another old man, with no contribution to make. He felt invisible and unwanted. The depth of that feeling leads me to believe that as a young man he had been scornful and dismissive of weak old men, because he now thought that everyone saw him that way. He was angry and afraid.

In my mind, which always distills things down to their simplest (sometimes oversimplified) form, the equation looked like this: Mom + comfortable with aging = happy; Dad + fear of aging = sad. Now which, I internally asked, do I want to be? Simple.

On the other hand, being bright and analytical, I knew that getting older didn't mean that all my worries and problems would disappear. I knew that advancing grades meant harder work and more responsibility and that being an adult meant work, taxes and lots of bills. I was puzzled by kids who would say, "When I'm an adult, nobody can tell me what to do anymore! It's total freedom!" Oh, sure, I'd think; nobody can tell you what to do except for employers, lawmakers, law enforcement, the DMV, your landlord, your doctor, the city council, your bank… plus, you'll have to buy your own food and place to sleep." That sort of thinking made my adjustment to adulthood easy, but alienated me from my peers. I was accused of being "a downer," a pessimist, and raining on the parade. However much they like me, my peers have usually felt that I don't "get it."

I never felt invincible, either. I was convinced death was just waiting for me around the next corner, from the age of about four onward. A lot of that is my dad's influence, I'm sure. He feared that we'd die every time we so much as had the sniffles or stubbed a toe. Being rather sickly had an impact, too. Many of my childhood memories involve being home from school, swaddled in blankets and clutching a tissue box, watching game shows on TV. Strep throat was reliable companion that never gave up on me for too long. I also remember having garbage cans next to the couch and next to my bed, because we knew if I had to throw up, I wouldn't make it to the bathroom. I remember getting food stuck in my throat and being unable to breathe. Once, I started to lose consciousness. I actually prepared a will when I was about 16. I suppose if I'd been robust, and Dad would have been more relaxed, I'd have felt immortal. Maybe not. Anyway, I'd hear adults talk about how kids felt they'd never die, that they could never be hurt, and I'd think, Ha! Fat lot you know! Then I'd meet kids who felt like that, and wonder what the heck was wrong with them.

I formed most of my opinions about life by listening to what everyone around me had to say, sorting and sifting it by the number of people I heard it from and how reliable the source was. I hear that most people need to experience things. I'm a vicarious learner, I suppose. It's actually served me very well. I could look at other people – say, my older siblings – and decide what to do based on what worked for them. I rarely had to make their mistakes. Plenty of my own, sure, but not the same ones I'd watched someone else make. I was never an "it'll be different for me" person.

When I was a kid, most adults seemed genuinely startled by how old they were, and how old other people were. I'd wonder if they thought aging just happened to other people. It was like being surprised by the sunrise to me. It happened all the time. It looked predictable to me. Some of that was youthful arrogance, I'm sure, and some was simple math. Two years was a fifth of my life, but adults tended to own socks older than I was. Two years is no big deal when you're 50.

I have a harder time understanding it now that I'm the adult. I'll be 40 soon. My friends are now the ones being surprised by how old they are, and how old other people are. I still don't get it, and it's alienating. I never know who's going to bite my head off if I introduce them as "an old friend." (Yes, it's happened. "I'm not old!" they'll snap. What is the politically correct term, "friend of long standing?" I met most of the most vocal "not old" friends when I was a teen, so "childhood friend" isn't accurate. And I'm now old enough to have friends of two decades or so that I met as an adult. If I can't have "old friends," what can I have?)

No, actually, that's not the whole picture. People started being surprised by how old my kids were when I was barely out of my teens. Again, it made sense to me. I hadn't been a teenage mother or anything. I was twenty years old and married when my first child was born. I was twenty-one when my second was born. I had a husband, a mortgage, and a new mini-van we were making payments on. This was what I expected out of adulthood. Hadn't the older generation kept telling us when we were in our teens how we had to grow up and be responsible? Well, I was! Why did everyone find it so startling? Why did people, old and young, think I should be partying until I puked with other people my age? For crying out loud, kids are told all their lives to grow up, and now I was a grown up, and I was acting like it. For years, I didn't even wear jeans or T-shirts anymore. I dressed like a middle aged woman, wearing those ridiculous "housedresses" and elastic waist pants. Not together, at least.

I understood older people looking at me and my kids and being surprised. These were the same people who'd told me all my life how I was getting so BIG, it was just amazing, and could never remember if I was in second or fifth grade. I was unprepared for people my own age to find my life so foreign.

When we moved back to the town we'd grown up in, I went back to the theater company I'd worked with before. They were university based, but the company was open to the public, so there were people of a variety of ages. One day in a rehearsal or a meeting one woman kept bemoaning her twenty-fifth birthday. She felt so OLD, she howled repeatedly. "It's awful!" "A quarter of a century!" After a bit of this, I said, "Oh, knock it off. I have no patience with people who feel old any younger than seventy."

She was not fazed. "You're just mad because you're a lot older than me," she said smugly. I gave her a look I hope in hindsight wasn't too withering and said, truthfully, "I'm twenty-five years old." She paled.

"But, I thought you had, like, kids and everything," she stammered.

"I do," I told her.

"But I thought they were like, older and everything." She was looking more distraught all the time.

"My oldest is five." She looked even paler. It had not occurred to her that I could be her age AND have kids – especially ones who were "like, older and everything."

I could not understand why people my age were still being largely financially dependent on their mom and dad. Or why they were still moving from rental to rental, with roommates. Or still debating what they wanted to be when they grew up. When would they realize that they were grown up, and get with the program, I wondered. The older adults, the ones who'd wanted us all to grow up, seemed to be fine with this extended adolescence. Worse, they viewed my life with worry. It was maddening. They feared that any day, I'd decide that my youth had been wasted, dump the husband and kids, and backpack through Europe. OK, stranger things have happened, but anyone who's known me for longer than a few hours should know that the likelihood was slim to none. I hoped that getting older would fix this incessant worrying by others about my life.

It has, in a few small ways. Nobody tells me I'm too young to be having kids anymore. In larger ways, though, I'm still out of the loop. I snapped at a friend not too long ago, someone I've been close to since childhood. She was discussing the teenage tendency to drink too much, drive too fast, take too many drugs and the like. She made the mistake of saying, "Well, we all went through that stage." Had she not known me as a teen, I wouldn't have been offended, but she had. She'd known me since I was 12. I barked at her, "NO, we ALL did NOT." She did something else that maddens me, and sighed, saying, "Well, not you, but most of us did." I hate that. But I guess that anybody who started reading AARP literature at 25 can't quite expect to be the norm.

First Concert Memories

I clearly remember my 15 year old self puzzling my mother by asking, "Can I go to New York City next month?" I knew the answer was likely to be no. But I had to take the chance, gamble on the long shot, that it would be yes.

I think it was the "next month" that threw her. It wasn't a nebulous, "some day" question. It had a deadline, and a rapidly approaching one. Still, I was 15, money didn't grow on trees, and New York was dangerous and 3,000 miles away.

"No! You cannot! Why do you want to go, anyway?" I'd never expressed an interest in New York City before.

"Simon and Garfunkel are reuniting and giving a concert in Central Park. It'll only happen this once."

My older sister never liked or understood my taste in music. She referred to it as "old weirdo music." She was a huge disco fan. I wasn't exactly clear on what defined disco - the explanation that it was "dance music" made little sense. I knew I wasn't a huge fan of her records, though. Mostly, I liked music that was 15 or 20 years old, or even older. I'd listened to my mom's records most of my life, and loved Ed Ames. I knew Tennessee Ernie Ford, Harry Belafonte and Robert Goulet. I loved the records my older brother and oldest sister had, too, lots of late 60s folk music. Those were the kind of songs I remembered my elementary school music teacher teaching us. In the early to mid 80s, when I was in high school, none of this was big with many kids my age.

Simon and Garfunkel were special. I couldn't believe they'd broken up, and it upset me that there was bad blood between them. Now, they were getting back together, but it was just for one night, and it was clear across the country! I remember clearly when I heard the announcement over my little transistor radio in our family's only bathroom. I leaned on my mom a bit, knowing it was hopeless. "But Mom! This is my only chance to see them, ever!"

It wasn't, as it turned out. Buoyed by the reception in Central Park, discovering that they could indeed work together again, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel planned a new album and a nationwide tour.

It may have been the memory of my out of the blue request two years earlier that made my mother receptive to the idea of letting me go. I'd never been to a concert at all, any concert. "And it's so much closer than New York, Mom! It's just in Oakland! I've been to Oakland before!"

Depending on who was driving, Oakland was three or four hours from home. That wasn't really the iffy part of the equation. The ticket price was doable, especially since I was the only child left at home and I had a part time job that earned me a bit of my own spending money. The kicker was that the friends I wanted to go with were Tony Perry and his brother Guy, and it meant two nights away from home to do the trip the way they planned it.

What they really wanted was a huge road trip with a dozen or more of us. We'd done that before, taking a trip to Disneyland. There were probably 20 kids and one adult.

             As it turned out, Bob, his girlfriend and Jeanette and his best friend Tim were the only other group going. They would go to Oakland in Bob's car and share a room. Tony, Guy, myself and a friend of theirs that I'd never met, named Kim, would go in Tony's car and share a room. Tony wanted to leave early, very early in the morning the day of the concert, so he wanted a huge sleepover at his and Guy's house the night before. That way, we could all get ready and leave together. Oh, and by the way, his parents were gone somewhere, and wouldn't be supervising this sleepover. I told my mother all of this.

             And, my mom said yes. "We cannot tell your father where you're going," she insisted. She remembers telling him that I'd gone on a church youth group trip. Dad would have just burst a blood vessel or something if he knew the whole plan. Granted, it all sounds like an invitation to disaster. But it wasn't.

Thankfully, my mother knew a great deal about all of us. She knew who drank, who took drugs, who was having sex, and with whom. She knew because I discussed it with her. She knew that I was not only doing none of the above, but that to a point they all toned it down around me. She knew that Tony did not drink or do drugs. She trusted his driving, even if he occasionally went a bit too fast for her. She'd ridden with him through Los Angeles traffic and nine hours home through the desert. She knew we wouldn't be doing any "fooling around." She knew we were all genuinely excited about the concert, not about unsupervised time together. If we wanted that, it could be had without a trip. So, the answer was yes, I could go.

The night before we left, Tony and Guy had us all over for a party. The question of who would sleep where in the 4 bedroom house was solved by deciding, we'd all sleep in the kitchen! The sectional sofa was pushed into the corner of the kitchen. They dragged what looked like every mattress in the house out, and shoved them all together in front of the sectional. We all sat on them and watched TV. I set up my camera and took a time delayed photo of all of us, piled on the huge bed and grinning. When at least half the kids went home, those of us sleeping over grabbed blankets and bedded down for the night.

We were all facing different directions. I was next to a guy named Pat, someone I barely knew. Tony's and Alicia's feet were at my shoulders and ribs, their bodies pointing away from me. I think Bob was at my feet, across the bottom of the mattress. I was near the seam where two of the mattresses joined, which actually helped keep me from rolling too far. I was trying so hard not to touch Pat, not to kick someone or be kicked, trying not to snore (which I do) that I actually slept very little.

The only thing resembling impropriety was that two of us, on what was ever after called The Big Bed, kissed after the lights were out. (Not me, by the way.) That was it. There were no hormonal surges on display.

I was still tired in the morning. It was dark when we left to go pick up Kim, since she hadn't slept over with us.

I had to drop Tony and Guy around the corner to wait, and pick up this girl that I'd never met, by myself. She lived with her grandmother, a woman who didn't particularly like Tony, and she had told grandma that she and I were going alone.

I was told all of this pretty much as we were pulling over and the boys climbed out. It was unnerving. Our parents knew what we were doing, and I wasn't prepared for this. I was told where I'd supposedly met Kim before – I don't remember where it was - because they were sure I'd be asked. They left out the important stuff, though.

Kim's grandmother asked where we were staying. Kim whispered, "Aunt." "I guess with Kim's aunt," I said, as grandma glared and Kim hissed, "Your aunt." "I mean, with my aunt. She lives pretty near the Coliseum. But I've never been to the Coliseum before, so I'm not sure how close, " I babbled. We tried to hustle out of the house as quickly as we could.

I was completely unnerved and growly when we picked up the guys. "You didn't tell me we were supposed to be staying with my aunt! I almost blew the whole thing right there!" I griped about having to not only be deceitful, but also trying to match the story they'd obviously concocted together but left me out of. But, now we were all ready, the station wagon was loaded, and we headed out over the Sierras.

Kim and I sat together in the back. I was actually a bit nervous about her. The Perry brothers tended to make girls swoon, and if she was going to spend the weekend mooning over one of them, it was going to be annoying for me. Luckily, she was nice, levelheaded and not swooning.

Like many brothers, Tony and Guy were in some ways the same and in some ways vastly different. Money brought out one of the differences. Guy liked to collect it for its own sake, to just look at it and enjoy accumulating it. Tony spent it freely, sometimes much too freely. I don't remember how much money Guy had on this trip, but he frequently fanned out the bills and sat looking at them and recounting them, despairing when their number dwindled.

The three passengers took turns in the front seat, and I was in front when Tony and Guy got into an argument about money. We were all buying our own food and souvenirs, so those costs were flexible, but we were splitting the gas and hotel cost evenly. Tony had just filled up the station wagon in Sacramento and asked us to pay him for our share of the gas. Guy fanned out his bills again, complaining that "if I give you that much, I'll only have (X number of) dollars left!" Tony argued that Kim and I had pitched in willingly, and Guy argued that that ought to be enough. They went back and forth, getting louder and angrier, until Tony pulled over at a scenic overlook, got out of the car, went to the passenger door and forcibly snatched money out of Guy's hand. For several more miles, Guy sat fanning out his money, counting it and whimpering. Poor Guy was miserable.

I don't remember where we stayed. It was in Oakland, someplace sensible like a Travelodge. I can't remember if we worried about being too young to rent it. At 17, either Tony or I could pass for being of legal age. The room was in Tony's name, and he had enough gift of gab to smooth it over if somebody questioned our age, I'm sure. It's only as an adult that it occurs to me that we couldn't legally rent our own room. We'd done it before, at Disneyland, and I wasn't worried about doing it again.

I don't remember where Bob, Jeanette and Tim were staying. It was either in the same hotel or close by. They, like us, got a double room and split the cost.

After checking in, we crossed the bay to spend our day in San Francisco. We did the tourist thing, hanging out at Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. I had my camera, as always, but I didn't want to take too many pictures. I wanted to save them for the concert, hoping that I could get some good ones there.

As performers ourselves, we watched the street performers with interest. We sat down on a planter to watch one, a charismatic juggler. Tony was a very good juggler himself, often juggling knives or his fire sticks. Balls and juggling pins were OK, but too boring for him. As we watched the San Francisco juggler, he handed his fire sticks to an audience member, a teenage girl three seats down from Tony. After he lit them, he said to her, "OK! Now, juggle!" She looked horrified, and the crowd laughed. We all speculated about what the juggler would have done if he'd handed Tony the fire sticks, because Tony would have stood up and juggled them.

Tony had painted a design on the back of the ivory sweat jacket he wore that day. Tony loved to design commemorative clothing. He did most of the T-shirt designs for our drama guild, and had designed our black satin drama guild jackets. This design said, "Simon and Garfunkel" in multicolored letters, and had the date, 1983. We ate dinner that night someplace like Denny's, a spot where the concert techies were also eating, unbeknownst to us. Also unbeknownst to us, Tony had virtually duplicated the official tour logo on his jacket. He discovered that fact when he was paying for our dinner and one of the roadies approached him. They had already paid, and were leaving the restaurant. "Come on, man, you've gotta get on the bus. We're gonna be late," the man told him, and tried to herd him out the door to the tour bus.

Tony was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. He looked at the bus loading in the parking lot, at the shirts and jackets they wore, and at the man trying to hurry him out. "I'm not a roadie. I'm just a fan. We're going to the concert tonight," he told him. Walking back to the table to tell us the story, he was already kicking himself. "I shoulda just gone with them! Nobody would have known! I could have gone backstage! I could fit in. I could find a job to do." For the rest of the night he would periodically say, "I can't believe I didn't get on the bus!"

I don't think I'd ever been in a bigger crowd than the crowd at the Oakland Coliseum. I was amazed that we found Bob, Jeanette and Tim. I couldn't believe how many people were there, and I couldn't believe that I was actually one of them.

Our seats were on the bleachers somewhere on the right side of the stage. We could see the stage itself, but they had set up a huge movie screen above the stage so that everyone would have an up close view of the show. I can't remember what the age of the other concert goers was. I doubt that I noticed. Tony had either just made a friend – not at all unusual – or had met someone he already knew, because I remember talking to a blond man, close to our age, whose ticket was for the floor of the Coliseum.

I honestly don't remember if there was an opening act. I doubt it. I remember clearly that when Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel took the stage, the roar was deafening. Their first song was "Cecelia."

I don't remember who I sat next to or who was around us. I was amazed that I was there, really there, hearing these legendary men sing. I snapped photos of the stage and screen and listened to the songs I'd known all my life.

The blond man came back, asking us if we wanted to go down on the floor with him. It was much closer to the stage. I was worried that we'd get in trouble, that we'd get kicked out, that the other fans would be angry. My timidity was overridden, (actually, blatantly disregarded by everyone else,) and we walked down the bleachers between fans, excusing ourselves, and were led to a spot near the center of the floor, so close that we could almost see the expressions on the singers' faces. Whoever we were next to there was welcoming, not angry, at our appearing there during the show. We cheered, we sang along, we had a great time.

At one point, Paul Simon brought out and introduced his wife. I didn't recognize her – someone had to point out to me that she was Carrie Fisher. As well as all the old stuff, the duo sang some music from their new album. Even though I don't own the song and it's been many years since the concert, I can still hear the chorus in my head from one new song: "Maybe I think too much, maybe I think too much." They didn't chat too much with each other or the audience, and there were a couple of glimmers of the rift that had kept them apart. Responding to the applause after one number, Art said to the crowd, "How about us, huh?" The crowd cheered, but Paul snapped at him, "I wrote the song."

          I took more photos, hoping they'd do the sight justice. Someone told me not to bother, that they wouldn't turn out, but I took them anyway. They did turn out surprisingly well, too. They were a bit gray, and the stage lights washed out the faces a bit, but they were still pretty good photos. I wish I could find the negatives, or even the prints today. One hung on my wall when I was a kid. They're probably in a box somewhere.

At one point Tony turned to me. "The bad part about this being your first concert," he said, "is that it will ruin any other concert for you. Nothing else will ever be this good." I wondered if he was right. Even if he was, it didn't worry me.

I think there were three encores, but it may only be two. As they sang one of their final numbers, I turned away from the stage to look at the crowd. I'll never forget that sight. The stadium was full, packed, with people singing, waving lighters, sharing the moment with the singers and each other. It was amazing.

I don't remember seeing anyone intoxicated. They were probably there somewhere, but they didn't ruin my night by being near me – or at least, being obvious. Even as we all filed out and left the parking lot, everyone seemed to be smiling, happy and courteous.

I bought a commemorative program, two T-shirts and a small button for my jacket that just said, "Simon and Garfunkel." I think I planned to tell my dad that they were gifts from Tony and Guy if he asked, but I don't think he ever did. I wore them often, too. I'm wearing one shirt in the drama guild photo in my senior yearbook.

I was exhausted after the concert. We went back to the room and got ready for bed. We'd asked for a rollaway on the theory that somebody might be squeamish about sharing a bed. We didn't use it, though. Tony and Guy slept in one bed, Kim and I in the other. I no longer really cared if I snored or if I kicked Kim. I needed sleep more than I needed vanity.

At some point, I became aware of an annoying noise. It didn't go away; it got louder and louder. Finally I was awake enough to identify the sound – someone was knocking repeatedly on our door. Nobody else woke up. I literally stumbled out of bed and toward the door. I barely had presence of mind to look through the peephole. It was Tim.

I probably said something deeply unwelcoming, like, "What are you doing here?" It turned out that Bob and Jeanette wanted privacy, leaving Tim nowhere to sleep. I invited him in. I think he or I woke one of the guys. I think he slept on the rollaway, or maybe the floor. I was asleep again in about 60 seconds.

When we got back home the next day, I had to settle for telling my mom, "It was great!" in a whisper. The details had to wait.

A month later, my newspaper advisor let me write a long, wordy review of the concert for the school paper. I still have it somewhere. She rarely, if ever, cut my work. It was very sweet of her.

I put the pin on the collar of my favorite jacket. On the other side, I put a Beatles button. A friend of mine named Angie personified the era's popular punk music. She had the spiked hair, fingerless gloves, black clothes and T-shirts from groups I didn't recognize and whose names, not to mention lyrics, were often profane. My buttons caused her to roll her eyes. "Get with it! Listen to something recorded this decade! Forget the music that's been around since before you were born!" I didn't, though.

Just a couple of years ago, a friend asked me if I'd ever consider letting my kids do the same thing. He knows how fiercely protective we are, and wondered if having teenage daughters changed the way I thought about the trip. If I thought there was a chance there would be sex or drugs or other recklessness going on, it would be a definite no go. But, I told him truthfully, "If they were all going to behave the same way we did, you bet I would let them go. In a heartbeat."

A popular party game among members of our church in the small town we lived in years later was a "Guess Who?" game. Each person wrote down on a piece of paper a little known fact about themselves. The host would read them out loud, and the party goers would have to guess who each referred to. One woman frequently put that she'd never had a cavity. My husband often said that his two front teeth are false. I almost always wrote that I've attended a Simon and Garfunkel concert. Given that I was only born in 1966, no one ever guessed that it was me.

"What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate"

When there's been an instance of information that's not passed on, incomplete instructions, an assumption that I'll magically know something because I'm the mom or other common occurances, I say to my family, "Verbal communication, folks! It's what seperates us from the animals!' yet again. Then again, perhaps what seperates us, communication-wise, is the opportunity for so much misunderstanding. Do you think that moose have conversations with each other about how, "Yes, I'm looking for a mate, but I don't want to mate with YOU," or that lionesses say, "Just for once, could you go out and get dinner? You take me for granted!" I don't think wolf cubs complain that the other cubs didn't ask them to play.

I wrote this almost 4 years ago. I don't think that my family will ever get quite used to each other's communication styles, but I hope we're avoiding more and more "Huh?" moments.

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Recently, I was in a play with my youngest daughter, Hallie. She's nine years old, and loves being a social butterfly, so I didn't mind when we were put into separate dressing rooms. She can get dressed and on and offstage without my help, and she's not particularly clingy. Still, I occasionally wished I was around to give her the parental "eye" – you know, that look that only Mom gives.

I walked into the enormous ladies dressing room she was in one morning (I and several others were assigned to a wing of the men's dressing room), and I could hear her all the way down the hall. She was shrieking and making the frustration noise she makes that sounds like nothing so much as a bird squawk - a very loud squawk. I walked in and saw her carrying on and dramatically jumping up and down, demonstrating that she couldn't reach the hooks provided for hanging coats. This is typical Hallie behavior, but as usual it was alienating. The louder and wilder she got, the more all the other girls inched away and studiously ignored her, except to sneak quick glances that said, "What is wrong with this girl?"

"Hallie, stop that!" I barked in my best Mom voice. She immediately stopped bouncing up and down, stopped making noise, and informed me in a perfectly reasonable voice, "But I can't reach the hooks."

"So all that was helping?"

"No," she said, and sighed. We've had this conversation before.

"So what should you do?"

"I can't do it! I need someone to help!"

"So how would you get help?" She looked blank.

"Well, have you asked anyone to help you?"

Sigh again. "No."

"Well?"

She turned to the girl at the mirror next to hers. "Would you help me, please?" she asked, in her sweetest voice. I know she knows how to do these things.

The girl immediately smiled and said, "Sure!" She nicely took the coat, hung it up, smiled at my daughter and assured her it was "No problem," when thanked. She couldn't have been nicer.

"See?" I pointed out. "Nobody can answer you if you don't actually ask for anything."

Was Hallie happy? No. Did she get the point? Undoubtedly not. We've been over and over this territory before. She hates actually expressing what she needs or wants, because she only feels loved when someone does something for her and she hasn't asked. She complains and howls, louder and louder when she fails to get the attention she wants, to give people the opportunity to demonstrate that they love her by leaping in and helping her do whatever. If she has to ask, she reasons, that means that no one really loves her. But in order to attract their attention, she's willing to be very vocal otherwise.

We've already been over this same territory with Lana, our oldest, now in college. She's always felt the same way. If you have to ask, it means that you're unloved. If people really loved you, they'd see what you needed and do it for you.

I've explained over and over that it's a simple matter of manners. If you need something, you ask politely. People like others who display manners. People do not like loud complainers. I've pointed out how quickly and easily someone pays attention when they're asked nicely, and how quickly whatever it is gets done. It all falls on deaf ears. My girls are sure that if you have to ask, it means that no one loves you.

We've had variations of this discussion about other matters. For instance, when you announce, "I'm thirsty," or "It's so hot," well, that's a statement of fact. It's no different than saying, "The sky is blue," or "My name is Sharon." If you want me to get you a drink, you have to actually ask. When they were toddlers and preschoolers, I'd prompt them: "You have to ask nicely. Say, 'Please may I have (fill in the blank)?'" When they get older, though, and certainly after their age hits double digits, I expect them to remember these instructions on their own. More times than I want to count, I've listened to a child state, with increasing frequency and volume that they want something and finally point out, in exasperation, "Is there something you'd like me to do about that?"

That's usually met with, "Oh. Could I have (blank)?"

"Maybe, if you ask."

Then, my darling child would roll his or her eyes, say, "May I please have (blank)?" and then go away thinking that I'm just stubborn or mean for making them jump through unnecessary hoops.

When Lana was growing up, and she was upset or worried about something, she'd wander around hanging her head, sighing more and more dramatically. She would wait for someone to say, "What's wrong?" before she offered anything. If you just let her drag around sighing, she'd eventually retreat to her room, quite possibly slamming things around, convinced that she was ignored and unloved. I would keep ignoring the theatrics as long as I could, waiting for her to say, "I'm really stressed/angry/worried," but that was futile.

I do not relate to these feelings. If I've had a bad day, I announce when I walk in the door, "That was a miserable experience!" Then I tell you why it was miserable. Then I move on. If I feel ignored, I'll say to my husband, or child, or mother, "Hey, I need you right now." I expect everyone else to do the same. And sure, it's nice if, say, your arms are full and someone opens the door for you just because they can see that you need it. I just think it's unnecessarily self centered to expect the entire world to watch your every move, trying to anticipate whether you need or want something.

Lana's gotten better, but still has a tendency to hint instead of ask. I'm working on Hallie.

I realize this is not limited to my kids. In fact, I seem to be the one out of step.

A girlfriend of mine was telling me about being on vacation with her husband, tired and sore and wanting to get back to the hotel. Her husband asked if she'd like to stop and hail a cab or keep walking. She told me, "I said, 'No, I'm fine,' by which, of course, I meant, 'Call me a cab right now.' But no, we kept right on walking. He's so oblivious." I was just flabbergasted. If she wanted a cab, why didn't she ask for a cab? And why feel hurt when they kept walking? Because, when her husband failed to read her mind, she felt unloved. I just cannot imagine.

Of course, this is the problem with being an extremely literal person. My husband is always sure I must mean something other than what I say. "You just can't win for losing," as my mom says. I'll say A and he'll be sure I meant B, because "People always say A when they mean B." He's sure that direct, clear communication is somehow rude, and that civility is maintained by deciphering what people really mean when they say something. "I end up barking, "Did you just meet me yesterday? If I meant B, I would say B!"

My husband and his family do this ridiculous phone call thing that drives me insane. They are all convinced that whoever receives the call is the loved one. So, they'll all wait for the other ones to call, waiting to see if they're loved. It's maddening.

We'll be sitting there on, say, Christmas, and instead of phoning his relatives, Dan will wait for them to call him. As time goes by, he'll start feeling blue, sure he's forgotten and unloved. "You realize that your sister is sitting there waiting, just like you are," I tell him. "While you're thinking, 'She doesn't really love me," she's thinking, 'Danny never remembers me. He doesn't care.'" He's sure I'm wrong. She can't possibly be thinking of him. If she was, why wasn't she phoning? Oh. My. Goodness.

Finally, I'll snap at him to pick up the phone, and he will. They'll all be delighted to hear from him, but he'll still be vaguely sad, because he's the one that phoned, sure that only the receiver of phone calls is loved.

Maybe I'm odd, but my sister hasn't written me in literally years, and she just phoned me for the first time in probably a year, and I still feel that she loves me. She knows, I'm sure, that I adore her. That seems, well, normal to me.

My husband and one of his sisters also have a deep misunderstanding about family dinners. My sister in law, Deanna, has made it abundantly clear, over several years, that on any "occasion" – a holiday, or when a relative is visiting – she expects everyone to come to her house for dinner. Dan refuses to go unless he is specifically invited. "I'm not just showing up!" he'll say in horror. "That's rude! I will only go if I'm wanted." Deanna, on the other hand, tells him what she tells everyone else – "Whaddaya want, a gold engraved invitation? Should I get the butler to deliver that?" She gets very impatient with the idea of individual phone calls. She has no patience with being told, "I didn't know I was supposed to come." So, it is an impasse. Each feels ignored by the other.

Verbal communication, people! It's what separates us from the animals!

What keeps me from assuming that others can, or should, know what I need or think without my saying anything is simple. One, I know that I can't read minds, so I can't assume that anyone else can. Two, do you really want someone to read your mind? Really? Think about it! All the people you know or come into contact with running rampant through your head – your childhood memories, secret crushes, your opinion of your cousin's decorating and your employer's wardrobe! The checker at the supermarket knowing about your sex life, your kids knowing what they're getting for Christmas – all of it out there for public consumption.

No, thank you.

Now, could you please help me with this problem? Because it's stressing me out.

How's That, Again?

I excerpted this essay for one I previously posted, about my feelings on education. I think the idea is more completely expressed here in the original, along with a few others. I also think that my kids hate it when I talk about them, but hey, they occupy more of my time and attention than anyone else does.
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I'd expected my kids to occasionally drive me crazy. I did not, however, expect them to do it in the ways that they do.

I'd watched kids and parents while I was growing up. I thought I had a pretty clear picture of all the things kids can do that will aggravate adults. I prepared my possible responses to many, many imagined scenarios long before I ever had children. I added many more while I had my first infant in the house. So, naturally, my children rarely did anything I'd prepared for.

When Lana, my oldest, was sitting up but not crawling, we'd sit her on the floor and hand her toys to amuse herself with. If they rolled out of her reach, she'd watch them go, reach out towards them once, discover they were out of her reach, and give up. She'd sit there, perfectly content to just look around, until we picked her up again, no matter how long that might be. She would not try to get the toys, and really didn't care that they'd gone. Other moms would watch this and be thrilled. "When my Joey's toys roll away, he screams until I bring them back! You're so lucky to have such a contented baby. You can actually get things done!" I'd smile, and agree that yes, she was very happy, and inwardly think, come on, girl! Go get it! Get angry! Tip over lunging! Something that makes sense and shows some drive! But no. She'd sit and smile.

Maybe if I place them just outside her reach, I thought, she'll want to go get them. No dice. In that case, she seemed to think they were scenery, visual stimulation like the mobile over her crib, for looking at only. Even when she started scooting and crawling, if I put a toy even an inch beyond her grasp, even if it was a favorite toy, she seemed sure it was there just to look at. She made no attempt to go get it.

I found myself thinking, will she always give up if she has to expend the tiniest effort? Will she ever want to work for anything? Will she spend her life totally complaisant?

I'd heard that I should expect broken sleep up until, or even through, the elementary school years. So, of course, all four of my children slept through the night when they were tiny. Two started sleeping through the night at about six weeks old. Terry no longer wanted fed at night after about six weeks, but she interfered with my sleep the most anyway.

She was only happy lying on her tummy. She was less than a day old when we discovered that any other position produced loud wails. Terry never whimpered or fussed. She went straight from content to red faced shrieking and back. If I laid her on her tummy, she'd almost instantly fall asleep. Lay her on her sides or back, and she'd wail like a Banshee. So OK; on the tummy it was. This was long before this sleeping position was considered a risk factor for SIDS and health care professionals started the "Back to Sleep" campaign. Even if it had been later, I still would have lain her on her tummy. When a kid has feelings that strongly held from the moment of birth, trying to change it will just make you both crazy.

She learned to roll from her tummy to her back at six weeks old. The trouble with this is obvious – she hated being on her back. During the day, when she was on a blanket on the floor, we could fix that rather easily. At night, it was a royal pain. Terry couldn't resist rolling over, but it took her a split second to go from, "Hey, look what I can do!" to, "I hate this! Fix it NOW!" We'd be awakened by a loud, angry shriek degenerating into a howl, go roll her over, and soon be awakened by another loud, angry shriek and howling. We took to measures that virtually amounted to bedding bondage. We'd try to tuck her covers in so tightly that she was virtually flattened on her tummy. It didn't work. She'd wiggle and squirm until she could flip over, then remember how much she hated being on her back. It was misery for all of us until she learned to roll herself from her back to her tummy again.

I soon realized that it is a universal truth, one of the certainties of the universe, that your children will do things that baffle you, things you never prepared for, things you never even contemplated the existence of.

When I was a kid, I was always baffled by adult response to my schoolwork. They would virtually swoon, and I never understood it. We'd be handed a paragraph to read about Johnny picking apples on his uncle's farm, and then we'd have to answer questions about the paragraph. I could not figure out what the point of the questions was. Why in the world would you be asked, "Where did Johnny go?" when the reading assignment started with the sentence, "Johnny went to his uncle's farm last weekend"? I finally decided it was a simple check to see if you read the assignment. Otherwise, you could say you did, and skip the whole thing. So, I obligingly answered the questions, amazed that the teachers would make them so obvious. It was even more obvious when you had a multiple choice option, as was usually the case. Even if you didn't read the assignment, if your choices were: "a. his uncle's farm, b. his father's office, and c. the grocery store," all you had to do was skim the assignment and see which words appeared. I decided there was just no accounting for adults and the odd things they did. I found it even odder when they would be so effusive in their praise for my work. We'd been handed a paper with the answers right there on it! It's not as if I had psychically divined the answers from a closed book across the room. So, I accepted the praise with the same attitude that I did the work – there's no accounting for adults.

Terry and Alex, my two middle children, had very similar reactions. They just did the work, without bothering to have existential angst about it. Lana and Hallie, my oldest and my youngest, were not content with the obvious answers, but their discontent took very different forms.

Lana, with a tendency to be anxiety ridden anyway, was sure that any seemingly obvious question was a trick. Ask what color the sky was, and the answer couldn't possibly be, "blue." It MUST be, she reasoned, some deeply complex, obscure answer that she, in her ignorance, would NEVER be able to figure out. The simpler the question, the more she would agonize and tie herself in knots. If she finally gave up and chose the simple answer, she was not reassured to find out that she'd gotten it right. She felt that getting it right was an unrepeatable fluke, or maybe carelessness on the teacher's part.

A large part of this attitude stemmed from the attitude of the children around her. Many of them would be complaining about how hard the work was. Instead of being happy that it wasn't hard for her, she was sure that it only seemed easy because she was doing it all wrong. Lana always wanted to fit in, and to her fitting in meant being just like the other kids. She hated anything that made her even a little different. So, if someone else said it was hard, well then, it was really hard, and if Lana didn't think so, she reasoned that she had to be the one that was wrong.

We told her, and her teachers told her, over and over and over again, that she was smarter than most of the other kids. She could not figure out how in the world anyone could think so. Being smart would make her stand out, something she really did not want. Besides, the smart kids always seemed so sure of themselves, and Lana was never sure of herself. Therefore, she thought, there's no way she could be smart. She had also decided, maddeningly, that all the pretty, popular girls were stupid, and if she wanted to be pretty and popular – and she did – she had to be stupid as well.

I cannot tell you how many times we would have virtually identical conversations with her. If she had the assignment about Johnny and the farm, and she was asked, "Who went to visit the farm?" she would hem and haw to the point of tears. We would tell her that the answer was in the reading assignment. We would ask her to read it out loud. Still, she would insist that there was no possible way to know who went. Finally, she would shout in frustration, "All I know is Johnny!" And we would tell her, "That's all you know because that's all there is TO know. That's THE ANSWER." She would look stunned, every time. Math, reading, science, even art would have her going round and round and then insisting, "All I know is…" And we'd say, ad infinitum, "All you know is THE ANSWER." And she'd be stunned, again. It was so exhausting.

It took until she was a junior in high school before Lana started to accept that really, she was bright and capable. She'd been in honors and accelerated programs for years by that time, and was still sure she was dumb as a fencepost. When it finally dawned on her that, "Hey, I can easily do things other people can't do," her reaction was, "Well, why can't they?" It still made no sense to her that she was different. But at least, praise God, she understood that she was bright. There are few things more infuriating than a child with a genius IQ who's convinced that she's dim.

Dealing with Hallie is exhausting in an entirely different way. She doesn't think she's stupid or that the work's too hard - on the contrary, she knows that most of it is easy. That's what throws her.

If she was given the assignment about Johnny visiting his grandparents and then asked, "Where did Johnny go?" she was likely to answer, "Swimming." At first glance, that kind of answer makes it seem that she was hopelessly lost. Ask her to explain it, however, and you were likely to get an extensive answer. "Well, it says that Johnny went to his uncle's farm and he helped feed all the animals and pick the corn, and after he did that I think he'd be hot and tired, and it said that there was a pond for the ducks, so I think Johnny went swimming in the duck pond because he was hot and tired." Obviously, this is a child who not only understood the material, but has taken her understanding farther than necessary. Still, the answer "swimming" will be marked wrong on any standardized test – indeed, on virtually any assignment.

Give her the multiple choice questions for the same reading assignment, and she's likely to choose, "the grocery store." Again, this will be marked wrong every time, but she'll have a logical reason for her choice. "Well, they picked all that corn, so they're probably going to have it for dinner, but you can't have just corn for dinner, so I think they went to the store to buy the rest of their dinner." She's internalized the story and fleshed out the details. Yet, her answer will still be marked wrong.

We have explained until we are blue in the face that the answers to the questions will always be in the reading assignment itself. She is sure that we are wrong about this. She cannot imagine a universe in which she is supposed to parrot back what she's just been told. She is positive that she's supposed to imagine what happens next – or happened before, or happened behind the scenes. Anything else seems ridiculous to her. Why ask the obvious?

So, now I'm faced with extreme frustration on two fronts: 1. No matter how many times I explain the expectations, my daughter ignores me, and 2. I am being forced to squash my daughter's bright and creative mind so that she'll fit into the mold society has deemed appropriate. It's absolutely maddening.

Math is even more of a headache for a creative child. Just because 2+4=6 last week, today maybe 2+4=11. Tables across the top of the page may or may not apply to the questions underneath, in her mind. My head starts to hurt after I explain for the 10,000th time that the answer will be found in the information you've already been given. Hallie's head starts to hurt as she tries to imagine a world in which she's not supposed to go above and beyond what's in front of her. Explain that the questions are to gauge what she's learning, and she questions how simply giving back the information you already have shows "learning." She can't imagine that repeating back is "learning" of any kind. And she's only eight, so we'll be having these conversations for years, I'm sure.

When she was in first grade, her teacher told us, "I've never seen a child more suited to the gifted and talented program. You really need to get her tested next year, when she'll be eligible. It's so wonderful for the other children to hear how her mind works." That's lovely to hear, really, but it won't stop her answers from being marked wrong on virtually any assignment.

I'm Not Buying It

I've always looked at certain characters, onscreen or on paper, and felt them to be rather obvious caricatures. No one actually thinks or behaves that way, I'd think. Then, I'd meet an actual human who did. It's terribly disorienting.

I now know that many behaviors, thoughts and feelings that I'd always assumed to be fictitious or exaggerated are, in fact, common. I don't quite know what to do with this knowledge, though. I still find myself feeling alienated or irritated.

I signed up for an online mothers group because my cousin invited me to. I frequently decline such invitations, because I'm not particularly a joiner. I do not play well with others. I'm in favor of avoiding awkward moments in which no one really knows how to react. But, I love my cousin, I think she's a great mother and online, you can always ignore things or turn off your computer, right? So, I signed up.

A great deal of the interaction in this group is the asking and answering of mom questions – "How do you get stains out of a Little League uniform?" "How do you get your baby to sleep through the night?" "How do you get your husband off the couch and involved in housework?" I frequently read the questions, and if I think I have a good, relevant answer, I'll post an answer. Sometimes, I deliberately do not respond to something, because to do so would be unkind. I read things and find myself thinking, "Are you kidding?" or, "What is wrong with you?" – not what one should say to a total stranger looking for help.

Still, these things will roll around in my head, distracting me.

Recently, a woman wrote in and said that she'd received a designer purse from her aunt and uncle, but she couldn't see herself carrying it, and she'd rather have the money. "It still has the tags on it. Is that enough to prove that it's genuine? Where can I sell it to be sure I'm getting top dollar?" she asked. I don't know why I decided to look at the responses; I have no interest in designer purses. But, I scrolled through the answers.

95% of them were, "Contact me! I'm interested in buying it!" I would not have predicted that. I continually underestimate the average woman's purse fetish. One answer really stopped me. "Are you sure you want to sell it? A nice handbag makes me feel pretty. You might want to keep it," the woman wrote, followed by an emoticon happy face and, "Just something to think about!"

My first gut reaction was entirely uncharitable – "Are you kidding me? This is some woman's life?"  The idea of a woman feeling pretty because of the bag she's carrying is so foreign to me I cannot even express it. I don't even understand feeling pretty because a person has gotten their nails done, and nails are physically part of the body. Being attractive because you have a bag in your hands? Something that you carry around when you need it, then set down when you don't? Are you attractive when you walk out the door to buy your groceries, but unattractive when you carry the groceries into the house, because the grocery bags are ugly? Am I even on the same planet as this woman?

Even figuring that what she meant looks something like: expensive purse = quality person = confidence = attractive, that's still too "out there" for me to contemplate. And, It's a real stretch to get there from, "A nice handbag makes me feel pretty."

I was still mulling this days later when I read another post. This woman was even more puzzling to me.

First, she bemoaned using drug store concealer, but conceded that "in the harsh light of the recession," it might be necessary. I thought back many years to my asking about the whole dislike of "drug store brands." What else was there, I wondered. Pretty much everything I knew about makeup came from TV commercials, meaning that I could tell you brand names and celebrity spokesmodels. I was then introduced to the world of department store makeup, where a single tube or jar could easily cost more than a month's part time job wages. No, thank you. I fled and never looked back.

This woman, after already lowering herself to use the makeup of the masses, discovered that she hadn't been using concealer, she'd been using tinted acne cream. Her horror leaped off the page, with phrases like, "added years to my life – or at least my appearance," "robbed me of my youth," and "set me back dog years." As the youngest child, she said, she'd learned from her older sisters "the critical importance – the necessity – of good eye cream." She was, she was sure, "the only 12-year-old on the block religiously using Christian Dior eye cream." Having broken this cardinal rule practically gave her heart palpitations, it seems.

Wow.

I tried to imagine whether my older sisters had ever told me about "the necessity of good eye cream." I'm willing to say that they may have, but if they did, they were soundly ignored. If my mother had started telling me about eye cream when I was 12 (or 22 or 32 or 42), I would have thought she was exhibiting early onset dementia. Her own mother aggravated her by sending, at least once a year, moisturizer from Michigan, to "combat that harsh Nevada climate." My mom would sigh and put the new bottle next to its unused compatriots.

The only time I've ever worried about moisture on my face is when my usual regimen for washing off my eye makeup at night made my skin feel so tight that I thought blinking might cause it to split. I started using petroleum jelly to clean it off instead, and the tightness went away. I never, even once, wondered about how it might affect my looks. I wipe the makeup away with tissues or toilet paper, for goodness sake. I'm sure that's breaking some obscure rule that I don't know or care about.

As I put this down on paper – OK, into the machine – I was just sure that once I uttered such an opinion publicly, I would hear the same stuff I always hear when I say things like, "I've never been on a diet," or, "Let's go out for pizza:" "Sure, I could do that, if (imagine the tone of voice here) I wanted to look like YOU." So, I went into the bathroom, put my face right up to the mirror and looked. I made faces. I squinted. No wrinkles. None. I must have won the genetic lottery: the secret is to have extremely oily skin and to be fat. Forget face cream – have dessert.

Lest we think that girly concerns are the only thing that puzzles me, stereotypically male behaviors have been annoying me lately, too.

I will never understand the way some people think about their jobs, but lately (of course) there's a lot of discussion about how people feel without their jobs. More people now are losing jobs than I ever recall facing the same situation in the past. In person, in print, on TV, I'm seeing a lot of discussions on joblessness.

I understand the Provider mindset, the idea that the family is depending on your income, and that without it, you're letting them down. That makes perfect sense. What does NOT make sense is having your whole sense of worth as a human being tied up in your employment, and many people – especially men – do.

If you lose your job, do you lose your education, abilities, wit, training, experience and personality? No. Those are what makes you, YOU. Yet so many men feel that every shred of their worth is taken away when they get that pink slip. Oddly enough, they feel it is restored when they get a new job – as long as that job is as prestigious as their last one.

I also cannot make too much sense of advancement angst.  I have seen men tied in emotional knots because they realize that they will probably never rise any higher than they are within their company. Even if they live in a nice house, own a car or two, provide not only the necessities but niceties like sports leagues, dance classes and the like for their families, they will feel enormous stress about never rising higher. Instead of, "Isn't this great? I have a job I'm good at, and it pays my bills," they'll think, "This is it? What will people think? What will they say? I'm better than this!" Knowing that the jobless guys would trade places in a heartbeat doesn't usually help, either. Instead of thinking, "Gee, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way" the reaction is likely to be, "You just don't understand!"

Concerns about status are not part of my daily reality.

Which brings me to cars.

I love my car. I've loved every car I've ever owned. I give them names, I stroke the dashboard and speak encouragingly or soothingly, depending on the situation. I apologize to them when I hit potholes or have to hit the brakes too hard. A car that looks or sounds like my first car makes me smile. It's just that I don't care much what brand it is, what it cost… It's just a thing.

A useful thing, true. But, that's what a car is for. It gets me and my family and my stuff from place to place. That's all I want out of a car. I do not understand wanting anything else from your car. It's like expecting your refrigerator to prepare and serve the food, as well as store it.

I used to laugh out loud at the auto body place whose commercials urged me, "Don't let your car affect your self esteem!" The point they were trying to get across was that I needed to have any dings, dents and scratches fixed, or my self esteem would suffer. My point is that my self esteem is unaffected by what I drive. My husband pointed out to me once as I was leaving my Rotary meeting that I was climbing into my $500 car with peeling paint, waving at a club member as she climbed into her Porsche Carrera. We would both get home that evening; that's all that mattered to me. I can't stand an unreliable car, but as long as I can count on it, I don't much care about anything else.

I do not understand status symbol cars. I don't care what you drive, as long as you don't expect me to be impressed by it. Telling me that your car has a race car engine, when you only drive it around town, is like saying that you have a space shuttle in your back yard; you don't intend to fly it, but by golly, you own it. If you wanted to, you, you could fly it, maybe up to the lake, but it's enough for you just to own it and know that you could fly it if you wanted to. I'll think that you spend money unwisely and that you're a bit adolescent; I will not think, "OOOOH, he's such a manly man." If you actually drive in races, well, own a race car. If you don't race, realize that you're an ordinary commuter.

I voiced this opinion once to a man who insisted that it took superior skills simply to own such a car, and practically purred at me, "Could you handle all that power?"

"Sure," I said. "I'd drive it to the grocery store and the movies, the same way I drive the car I own now."

That idea gave him high blood pressure. "That isn't the way the car's meant to be driven!"

"You didn't ask if I'd race it." Come on. I've never had a speeding ticket in my life. Do I look like a speed demon?

I love watching "Top Gear," the BBC version, for the witty banter, not for the cars. I couldn't tell you what car they featured even in the middle of an episode. Still, I am delighted that they reinforced one of my very few brand loyalties.

I love Volkswagens. I have never seen them experience VW failure on Top Gear. In fact, when they did one of their endurance races, every time they got stuck in a bog, or a desert, or on a hillside, what came chugging along to pick up the stranded driver? A VW. There they'd be, sweating and cursing, with the hood up, or digging the tires out of the muck, and I'd hear the familiar sound, and the VW would come over the hill or around the bend, even in the middle of the South American desert. Delightful.

I'm not quite sure why, but lately these instances of me being just out of synch seem to be piling up and causing me stress. People seem to expect me to slap my forehead, say, "I've gotta get with the program!" and suddenly covet designer bags and sports cars. I just can't do that. I'd feel ridiculous. And it would be silly, superficial and shallow. So, I expect people to not make a federal case out of it and just be OK with my NOT being superficial.

Don't ask me how that's going. You don't want to get me started.

Delusions of Grandma

I find myself being sucked in to every display of baby clothes and toys, especially little girl ones.

I was standing in front of a rack of tiny, frilly pink dresses in Walt Disney World, enthusing yet again recently. "Isn't this cute? Feel this fabric - isn't it soft?"

"Mom. You don't need it. She doesn't need it." My son has appointed himself as my voice of reason.

"Sure she does!"

"Mom. No. Walk away."

I try and explain that he's fighting a losing battle. This behavior is encoded on my DNA. "Come on. I'm a grandma."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am!"

Dramatic sigh from my teenager. "You are not a grandparent. You have delusions of grandma."

OK. So the child in question is not related to me, by blood, marriage or adoption. I did not give birth to or raise her mother. I've never even met her father. She does, however, belong to us, to my whole family, as do her blood relatives.

The "she" in question is Lilya Jade, cherubic daughter of my oldest child's oldest friend. We have considered her mother part of our family since she was seven years old. Her sister, whom we also claim, was six; my girls were also six and seven. Now Lilya is also part of our family.

Most people have someone in their lives that they consider family without benefit of blood or legal ties. Those of us who are blessed to have many of these people in our lives know how valuable they are. Most people aren't too puzzled by this concept.

Of course, sometimes they are. I remember perplexing my best friend's mother. "Why do Sharon's children call you Aunt Ariane?" she'd asked. During high school, her daughter and I were inseparable. Years after their editor referred to Woodward and Bernstein as "Woodstein" (but years before the press felt the need to coin a combined name for every celebrity couple), we were collectively known as "Shariane." How could she not be my children's aunt?

The G-word, though, is so fraught with emotional baggage, so tied up in feelings about age and aging, that I'm finding that people react strongly and unpredictably to it.

When my daughter got married, a friend asked me, "So, are you ready to be a grandmother?" She was undoubtedly planning on ribbing me about how old I was, because she seemed surprised by my answer – "Oh, yeah."

She stared blankly at me for a moment, then said, "No, you're not."

"Yes, I am."

"No, you're not!" she insisted. "You still have kids at home."

I never thought that being a grandparent was the exclusive domain of empty nesters. I was 11 and my sister was 14 when our older sister made us aunts. My mother was 47, and it wasn't even her oldest child having the baby. My friend Jacquie loved it when her aunt came to visit; her aunt was almost exactly her age. I'd known since I was first pregnant that my kids could be past their teen years and married, and still make me a grandparent in my thirties, and I wasn't a teenage parent.

I do not understand people who equate being a grandparent to having one foot in the grave. I will never be one of those people who makes up a ridiculous nickname – "Call me Mumu" – to avoid the G-word. Names in other languages – Abuela, Nonno – are great, but denial is not.

Still, only one of my friends had children when I did (she's a grandparent twice over, and loves it), so many of my friends from childhood do not want to hear the G-word. Several of my close friends from school have oldest children younger than my youngest. My kids have been making them feel old for years, so I should have seen this coming. I didn't.

"Don't even mention grandkids! My child is still in elementary school!" one friend said to me. My child was still in elementary school as well, but she was my youngest. My oldest was a married woman.

I'm hoping that I never become one of those parents who leans on their kids to produce offspring, but I'm also not telling them to put it off. Sometimes that baffles even my kids. When one of my daughters asked me about it, I pointed out to her that I married young and had kids immediately. "That's why you're supposed to tell us to avoid it! You're supposed to be telling us how you did it all wrong, and how we shouldn't make your mistakes!" she said. I have made many mistakes, but my family isn't one of them.

Meanwhile, little Lilya was a surprise for her lovely mama. She didn't think she'd be having kids this soon. Life does that to you. I like the Yiddish saying that man plans, and God laughs. Families expand and contract despite our plans, our wishes, our expectations. Change can be very good.

She'll be turning one in a matter of weeks. She lives hundreds of miles away, so we won't be attending a party, taking photos or watching her tear into a cake made by her Auntie Terry. Probably because of that, I find myself over-shopping. I could send this! Or this! Or both! I should just send an easily mailable, useful gift certificate, but I won't. It is useless to tell a grandparent not to shop for a birthday.

Delusions indeed. Is that any way to talk about Lilya's Grandma Sharon?

Siblings

A friend of ours has a household full of daughters. When she and her husband married, they each had a daughter from their first marriages. They then had three more together, and are currently raising a niece as well. I made mention not too long ago of the fact that my brother and sister were from my mother's first marriage. "I've been meaning to ask you about that," she said. She told me that she and her husband worried that their girls would have issues with each other. Their niece looks very different from the others, one girl lives part time with her mother, and one girl's father recently died. Add normal sibling squabbles, and you have potential for resentment. They worried that the girls would pick on each other and form alliances against one another based on who their parents were. "What was it like for you growing up?" she wanted to know.

I cannot remember a time when I didn't know that my brother and sister had a different father. They look very much like their Italian dad, for one thing, whereas my father's two daughters look almost Nordic. My brother retained his original last name. It was just another fact of my life, like our address. I thought nothing of it.

I also knew, from the time I was a small child, that their father did not come to visit them and they did not go to visit him. They never even got birthday cards or phone calls. I also knew that my dad preferred it that way – he and Frankie, Lynne and Gary's dad, did not get along. Now I wonder how different the family dynamic would have been if Frankie had been a familiar presence. At the time, I never went any deeper than the explanation that Frankie was an alcoholic, and one of the reasons my mother divorced him was that he ignored his children, or broke promises made to them. She'd told many times the story of the day she first decided she would leave him. He'd promised the kids that they would go to the park after he got off work. She assumed that this would be another empty promise, but the kids were excited to go out with their dad. After work, he went to the bar instead of coming home, and she knew that. She assumed that they didn't. As time went by, they clamored to go to the park, and she put them off by telling them that Dad wasn't home yet. She figured they'd assume he was still at work. When the response was, "Well, why don't we just go pick him up? He'll be at the bar," she realized that the kids were fully aware of where their dad was, and that the bar was more important to him than they were.

I knew my dad thought of Frankie's two kids differently than he did his own two. That knowledge wasn't integral to my being, though. It came gradually over the years. His relationship with Gary was always problematic. I was sure then, and still am, that part of it was because Gary was a boy. More particularly, he was Frankie's son. It bothered Dad that the only other male in the household was not his son. I was, and am, sure that he'd wanted me to be a boy. I was pretty much his last chance, born when he was retiring and the finances were already stretched unbearably – born, I think, to give him one last chance at a boy, and to even the score at 2/2. I always knew he loved me, but I was also sure he'd had his fingers crossed for a boy.

I barely remember when Gary had his own room. When I was young, one room was Lynne's, one was June's and mine. Gary slept on the living room couch and stowed all his belongings behind it. Still, I thought of that as a space issue. The house only had three bedrooms. I remember sleeping in a crib in my parents' room, and I remember the first time I slept anywhere else. When I was three, they moved me in with my sisters. The girls' bedroom had a double bed that Lynne and June shared. They put me in the middle, and I was miserable. I was cramped and hot, and the others kept pulling the covers up over my face. I slept badly and hated it. It was shortly after that that Gary moved onto the couch and Lynne got his room. I assumed it was a move to keep all three of us girls from having to share. It wasn't, but I didn't know that until much later. He'd actually moved out of the house, and then back in. I was sure that keeping me from having to spend my life sleeping in the middle was an obvious goal.

Still, it didn't really sink in how differently Dad saw us until I was fifteen or sixteen. We had a family friend over, and Dad said something to him about "my stepson." I was baffled. I kept turning it over and over in my mind. Dad had never been married before. There were only the four of us kids. He always referred to Lynne as "my daughter," just as he did June and me. I could not for the life of me figure out who he was talking about. It took me probably twenty minutes or more of puzzling before the lightbulb went on in my head. He meant my brother! That was the only time I ever heard him use that term, although I can't recall him ever saying, "my son." Usually he referred to Gary by name.

I always adored Gary and Lynne. I thought that Lynne was the most wonderful person in the world, and I wanted to be just like her. I was three years old at my brother's high school graduation, and I remember being upset that a bigger fuss wasn't made over him during the ceremony. They just read his name, and he walked across the stage, just like everybody else. I thought he should at least get to speak or they should talk about him or something! After all, HE was the important one, and everybody else was just kind of there, too.

I loved it when either one of them got to babysit. Gary played games, and Lynne once walked with us all the way to 7-11 to get lunch – what an adventure! Plus it was new, exotic food – Spaghettios with sliced hot dogs in it! What a gourmet meal! What an adventure!

When I was in first grade, some of the kids in my class were talking about nationalities. One boy volunteered that he was Italian. "My brother and sister are Italian," I told him. "Well, that means that you're Italian, too," he said. Nope, I told him. I was German, Polish, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. "If your brother and sister are Italian, then you are too!" he insisted. No, I told him, I'm not. I was having a bit of fun with this game, but he was becoming more and more agitated, so I decided to reveal my trump card, proving I was right. "They have a different father than I do. Their father is Italian," I told him.

He calmed down once the mystery was explained. "Oh, they're not your real brother and sister, then," he said. Now, I was a mousy, timid child, scared of my own shadow, but I was infuriated. No one had ever said such an insulting thing to me in my life. "YES, they ARE!" I ripped into this poor kid. We had the SAME mother, we lived in the SAME family, and nobody had any right to tell me that my brother and sister WEREN'T my brother and sister! The poor boy stared at me with his eyes getting wider and wider as I ranted, and finally stammered an apology. I don't think anybody in my class had ever seen me stand up to anyone before. I stopped yelling, but inwardly I seethed. I don't think I ever really forgave him.

When I went home full of indignation and told my mom, she told me that some people thought that way. She told me that the technical term for what Lynne and Gary were to me was "half brother" and "half sister," but we'd just never called them that. If I ever got into a nationality argument again, she said, I could explain it that way. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard. "Half" brother? "Half" sister? It was absurd. How can you have half a brother or sister?

Gary and Lynne, on the other hand, had every reason to resent June and I. For one thing, they always had chores, and we, the younger two, didn't. People have grown to hate each other over less. But as far as I ever saw, it never affected the way they thought about us. They didn't care who our dad was, or who took out the trash or fed the pets - we were their baby sisters. I asked them, and my mother as well, after we were all grown, if they actually resented us and just did a good job of hiding it. They both had looked rather puzzled that I'd asked, and assured me that no, they never thought of it that way. Mom too was sure that they never thought any such thing. I suppose that could be unusual, but probably not. Children don't usually have the same issues that adults do.

Gary was a scenic and wildlife photographer. I was fascinated by that. His regular job was working in a garage, and I bragged to everyone that he was a mechanic. I thought that was very impressive. He was actually the parts counter guy, a job he'd have off and on all his life, but I was blown away by the fact that he knew what all the parts of an engine were, and how to fix things. Dad didn't, and he was older. That to me said that Gary was very smart (which, actually, he is).

I was so enthralled by his photos, and the trips he took to take them. When a photo would appear in a magazine, he'd give Mom a copy, and I was delighted. Once, his photo was even on the COVER of a magazine. It was great! I was star struck. For Christmas the year I was eight, he bought me my own camera. I had never owned anything so wonderful and grown-up in my whole life! I loved it. It went everywhere with me. I soon learned that I had an "eye" for photography. Everyone else loved my photos, but the praise I craved the most was Gary's. He was a REAL photographer.

After Lynne moved out, I loved it when I could go to her apartment, or shopping, or out to lunch with her. I loved her car, a red VW bug. I wanted one just like it when I grew up. I wanted to be just like her, but she was so pretty. I knew I'd never be as pretty as she was.

When I was ten, I got to be a bridesmaid in Lynne's wedding. It was so glamorous! We shopped for beautiful, floor length dresses. Lynne and Mom finally made them, which was even better. I loved my yellow dress with its lace trim. I loved being important on such a special occasion. I even walked first down the aisle, a prospect that was terrifying but became doable after Lynne assured me that she knew I could do it. We pressed my bouquet of yellow and white carnations, and stored them in the box with my dress, under the bed in Mom's room.

When I was eleven, Lynne made me an aunt. I was so excited! Plus, none of my classmates were aunts. I felt special. I remember clearly going into my fifth grade teacher and telling her about my niece's birth, along with her full name and the fact that she was my sister's daughter. I remember even more clearly the phone call announcing her arrival the night before, after I'd already been put to bed. Mom came in to tell June and I that the eagerly anticipated baby was here.

Actually, my relationship with June has always been the problematic one. For one thing, we were close enough in age to butt heads. Also, she was Dad's first child, born when most of his siblings were grandparents. He'd almost given up on fathering a child. She was adored, and accepted it as her due. Then I came along. While I was not lavished with abject adoration, I took enough of the spotlight to make her forever resentful. Plus, she had informed my parents that she wanted "a boy baby," and was angry when they brought a girl home from the hospital. "Take her back and bring me a boy!" she said.

The closest we got to any - what, discrimination? - based on biology was when any of us girls, Lynne included, would do something Gary thought was stupid. Then he'd grin and say, "Well, that certainly doesn't come from Mom's side of the family." We were never offended by this. I still think it's amusing.

I told my friend, "Truthfully, it never mattered to any of us." None of the four of us had worried about parentage or bloodlines. We were simply siblings.