A Holiday for All of Us

This is one of those special years when the first night of Passover, which was the setting for the Last Supper, is aligned with Good Friday.   When this occurs, I always feel that it heightens the importance of the day, making it relevant and meaningful to a greater segment of society.

A Jewish mother has only one full-time job when Pesach (that’s what we call Passover) comes around.  Pesach is unusual among the Jewish holidays in that it is celebrated around a dinner table over specially cooked foods rather than in a house of worship.  (Technically this is not true, as the first two days are full-blown “holy days” on which very observant Jews also make an appearance at the synagogue.)   The foods are specially engineered to preclude leavening and forbidden grains; as such this is a holiday with a flavor palate all its own.  It takes a lot of shopping for special ingredients and a lot of cooking to prepare a meal that normally lasts about four hours.  The Seder table in all its glory is the "dinner of the year"--the magnum opus of the traditional Jewish mother.

Everybody who has seen the Prince of Egypt or endured Sunday School (of any Judeo or Christian religious order) knows the story of the Exodus that is recounted at the Seder.  But the beauty of Pesach transcends the knowledge that a compassionate and powerful God will smite those who dare to oppress us.  The true lesson is one of tolerance:  accept those who have different values, different customs, and different appearance.  It is an ancient message, but one that is as relevant and meaningful today as it ever was. 

I find it interesting that an interactive format such as a dinner table is the chosen venue for delivering this message.  Most holiday messages are delivered declaratively in an auditorium format, a rabbi looming large over a flock of faceless congregants bolstered by the presence of the Torah scrolls.  By contrast, during Pesach we are equals among men, women and children.  We sit together at home where we are the most vulnerable and humble.  There is no ordained leader; we each take turns telling the story and asking essential questions.   Everyone is an equal and active participant.

This first-person experience is the key to Pesach.  Throughout the Haggadah (the book of ordered activities and readings that forms the program for the Seder) we are encouraged to think of history as if it happened to us personally, identifying with being slaves, surviving oppression, and being lead to freedom through a parted sea.  We talk of when “we” were slaves in Egypt.  The tradition of sampling a variety of symbolic foods—horseradish, a course mixture called Haroset, matso—extends our first-person experience of bitterness, slavery, affliction, and the haste of the Exodus.  The aim is not to distance ourselves from the pain until it becomes abstract; rather, we keep the wounds alive in order to participate in the unity of the Jewish experience.

This is not a holiday of rote chant and response.  On Pesach, we ask existential questions and debate the responses.  It is an occasion to think about where we have been and to appreciate what we have.  Even as we celebrate our freedom (it is customary to recline at the table to signify our independence) we recognize its transience, forcing us to acknowledge that mankind is still a long way from embracing true freedom.  Even as we mark our escape from our captors, we concede that it came at the expense of others.  Our joy is further tempered by the reality that in today’s world, others continue to experience that which we fled.  We use this experience and these teachings to be better men and women, better neighbors, and better citizens of the world.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Pesach is this realization: that while we sit in our homes eating the traditional foods and discussing the events of the past, Jews across the globe are conducting reasonable approximations of the same Seder.  Connected by these tastes, songs, and symbols, we form a human and spiritual chain that resonates from time zone to time zone. We celebrate the Seder for two nights to be certain that this wave of tempered celebration comes full circle around the globe.  It says we are free, we are one, but most of all, we will continue to survive.

Tomorrow's blog:  Yummy Decadence

Grace Under Pressure

In my experience, everyone has one attribute that becomes the caricature of their identity.  Jay Leno is the guy with the chin.  Meryl Steep is the actress that does accents.  Julia Roberts has her smile.  Brad Pitt is tattooed on Angelina Jolie. 

The same is true among the common folk.  My husband and I are bad with names, so our friends become the one who likes to argue, the one with the funny laugh, the one who keeps kosher, and the one from Texas.  Much to my dismay, I have long been the girl who plays the piano.

My husband is the ‘oral and maxillofacial surgeon.’  Whew.  If you’ll pardon the pun, what a mouthful!  Most people do not really grasp what this is, other than someone who went to dental school and then did many years of surgical residency.  To say he is a dentist is technically correct; he did graduate with honors from dental school.  He is also a multi-faceted surgical specialist who can treat a variety of conditions from the mundane to the grossly abnormal.  There is something about Tom that compels people to seek favors and advice; he treats family members and complete strangers with an equal dose of his signature calm. 

Tom is a handy guy to have around.  He is someone who I would happily allow to eclipse the king’s horses and men should I need to have my face surgically put back together again.  There was the one night that I was trying out a new set of chef’s knives and cut off the fleshy tip of my finger, catching some of the nail bed in the process.  I thought I would bleed out right there in my kitchen.  He drove to the drugstore and returned in a flash with an assortment of random products, including something with the same bonding agents as surgical glue.  Much like a medical MacGyver, he stopped the bleeding and patched me up.  It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but I avoided a trip to the emergency room and the certainty of stitches.   It was only a year ago, yet when I look at my fingers—which are quite dear to me—I honestly cannot tell which one it was.

It was no surprise, then, that Tom rang the call button when the captain asked if there was a doctor on board the flight.  We had just concluded a magical trip to Istanbul.   The 767 had cleared Turkish air space, and we were settling into our cushy business class seats with hot scented towels and mimosas for the long flight home.   There was a one or two minute hesitation as my husband deferred to any internist or other “sick people doctor” who might answer the captain’s plea, thinking it was unlikely that someone on board had developed an emergency facial malformation.  I could see a guy across the aisle—obviously a physician—looking cagily at Tom.  These doctor guys can smell their own kind.  Once he picked up Tom’s scent, he sat back in his seat silently.  Coward!

Tom was greeted by thankful flight attendants who quickly escorted him to the rear of the aircraft.  There, a very old woman who spoke only Turkish was vacillating on the brink of consciousness.  Apparently she had not been well and was being brought to America by a niece, perhaps to receive medical attention—it was unclear.  The old woman got up to use the rest room and passed out cold.  Once horizontal she regained consciousness, only to lose it again when they sat her upright.  Even propped in her seat she was touch and go.

While my husband was assessing the situation, I watched with interest as the online mapping display on my seat’s video screen showed the progress of our flight northwestward over Europe.  He was gone for what was approaching an hour, and we were beginning to cross the English Channel.  I looked at my neighbors, who had suddenly taken an inexplicable interest in me, and declared to no one in particular, “They are going to put this plane down!”  “What?” “Why?” they all said.  It was simply really.  The patient in the rear of the plane was obviously sick enough to command Tom’s assistance for a long while.  The airplane was coming close to clearing land before heading out over the Atlantic.  There was no way they could risk taking a sick passenger past the coast line.  Sure enough, the captain broke in to announce that we were making an emergency landing at Shannon Airport in Ireland.

Our plane was met by an impressive emergency response team.  Unfortunately, they did not possess any sort of gadget for transporting a living person down a long airplane aisle.  The poor woman had to walk herself, a process that required being vertical which, of course, caused repeated trips in and out of a conscious state.  Tom and the niece ended up gently dragging and pushing until their ward was conveyed from the last row safely to the waiting paramedics.  I averted my eyes to avoid witnessing how they inevitably got her down the long metal staircase to the waiting ambulance on the tarmac.

Once the medical crisis was averted, the plane had to be re-slated, as it was now a flight originating in Ireland.  We waited about two hours to receive new flight plans and a new flight number while the maintenance crew refueled and replenished the plane.  Normally, when a plane lands on schedule, it has consumed most of its calculated volume of fuel in flight.   Because we landed the plane prematurely, it had been necessary to dump fuel to avoid “landing heavy” at Shannon.  The airline accomplished this orderly transition with nary a hiccup. 

And now Tom, who only moments before was the hero who saved the woman on the plane to the applause and appreciation of its passengers, became the goat who ruined everyone’s lives.  The people on the plane went crazy!  Although this was a humanitarian mission to seek emergency attention for an ailing—perhaps dying—woman, through most of the passengers’ eyes, this was a personal inconvenience that not only added to the duration of a long flight, it threatened their already tenuous connections at JFK Airport.  The call buttons began ringing one after another.  Passengers were demanding everything from personal assurances, to new reservations, to complete refunds.  The flight attendants were at their wits’ ends.   As the decision maker who created this predicament, Tom endured the stares and glares of the passengers around us, knowing that he had made the right call not only for the old woman, but also for the comfort of the passengers on the plane.  “What are you going to do?” I asked.  “I think I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” he replied.  It would never occur to Tom to be rattled by what people think.

The captain broke in, trying to calm the madding crowd.  “Please understand,” he implored, “we would do the same for any one of you in a similar situation.  We put the health and welfare of our passengers above all else.”  It was little comfort to the single-minded guests.   “You have to do the right thing,” my husband said.  His voice was a bit louder than usual, hoping to be heard, but it was still bathed in calm.

Arriving at JFK Airport, I feared a riot would break out.  Passengers were up and out of their seats even before the seatbelt light was extinguished, each one clamoring to beat his neighbor to the front of the immigration line.  Tom sat calmly and made no effort to get up; we let people rush past us to exit the plane.  Baggage claim, as usual, was the ultimate equalizer; out-of-breath passengers stood awaiting their fate in a familiar game of carousel roulette.   We approached just as our bags appeared down the chute.   In the end, our flight from Ireland arrived two-and-a-half hours later than it was originally scheduled to arrive from Istanbul.  Our connecting flight to Boston was at least five hours late with no sign of aircraft or a firm departure time.  Tom smiled.  “See, no reason to rush,” he said.

Tomorrow's blog:  A Holiday for All of Us

The Pianist

I really need to start practicing again.  My Steinway mocks me.  I admire those who never give up. 




The Pianist


What mighty form envelopes ivory keys,

As tempting stage demands temerity,

Will virtue spring from hands as small as these

So practiced to achieve dexterity?

In each new age a genius redesigns

The pleasing counterpoint to God’s rejoice,

He reads the music found between the lines,

As Master’s hand engenders a new voice.

Let technical achievement spread your wings,

Fulfilling promise offered by the notes--

Embrace the rush that live performance brings,

And ride upon the love that art promotes.

How transient the resonating  den--

Tomorrow you create it all again.

Tomorrow's blog:  Turkish Carpet Ride

License to Steal

In an earlier chapter of my life, I had a career with a large corporation.  My daily reality involved long hours, lots of travel, and a carefully-orchestrated game of tag-team parenting.  When my son started public school, the stability of day care gave way to waves of unpredictability.  I could never be certain when the school would call and demand that our child be picked up “within the hour.”  This could occur because of everything from behavior issues, sudden fever, or as was the case so very often—head lice. 

As if getting through the school day wasn’t challenging enough, little soldiers of two-career families were marched off to “after school” programs, filling the gap between 2 and 6pm. Typically, groups of friends went together to the same destination, creating not only a convivial atmosphere among the kids, but also a safety net for the occasional parental mishap. 

After school programs were ubiquitous.  I do not know whether things have changed in twenty years, but back then they were not subject to the same standards as day-care centers, exempting them from the strict supervision ratios, square footage requirements, and other quality guidelines.  Abuses could run rampant; it was a license to steal.  For example, we discovered that one program picked our children up from school nearly half an hour late, leaving them standing outside the building in the hot Atlanta sun or pouring rain.  Then, although their school house was about two minutes away, they drove the kids around the neighborhood in a school bus for another 30-45 minutes.  It turns out that they did not have room for these older children in their building while the younger day care kids were taking their afternoon naps.  They kept them in a holding pattern until the younger kids were outside playing.

It takes a special type of person to commit to taking care of young children, all day, everyday.  The people who do this with sensitivity and compassion are angels in my book.  Unfortunately, the people in my story were indifferent to the needs of children, exploiting the lucrative demographics of their parents for profit.  There is a special place in hell for people like them.  It should be no surprise, then, that I had a memorable experience with the manager of one particular after school program—a woman devoid of integrity and conscience.  It has been nearly twenty years since this episode occurred, and my emotions are just as raw and angry today.

I enjoy sewing and was long overdue for a new sewing machine.  I treated myself to a fancy model that also performed computerized embroidery with an attached moving embroidery hoop.  It operated with a series of pre-programmed cartridges.  There is a library of cartridges available that creates everything from monograms and flowers to theme-based pictures like cartoon characters, boats, and military icons.  My son was very much into rockets in those days.  He and my husband launched model rockets in the park and we had recently taken a trip to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.  I found that this sewing machine had a cartridge that made rockets as well as my son’s favorite—the Space Shuttle.

As a surprise for my son, I purchased a long-sleeved denim shirt at the Kid’s Gap (suitable to be used as a light jacket) and embroidered a Space Shuttle above the front chest pocket.  My son was so excited by his new jacket and could not wait to wear it to school.  But the next day, when the babysitter picked him up from the after school program he was so over-heated he forgot about his jacket.  The next morning, when he went to put it on again, he realized he had left it behind.  I reminded him to look for it in the lost and found.

When my husband retrieved my son the next night he was crestfallen.  His jacket was gone.  I told him that I would be picking him up tomorrow and we would look for it together.  Still no luck.

My son was visibly shaken up when I got home from work on jacket day #4.  He had gotten in a fight with a boy at school and the animosity continued at after-school care.  Not only did this kid attend the same afternoon program, but his mother was the manager.  When I asked what happened he said, “Stephen (fictionalized name) was wearing my jacket!  I told him it was mine and to give it back, but he laughed in my face and ran away.”  I told my son that this was good news, because now we knew where his jacket was.  I promised to come by early and speak with Stephen’s mother so we could get the jacket back.

If I thought that logic and manners would prevail among adults, I was sadly mistaken.  I explained to the boy’s mother that my son had been looking for his jacket all week, that he had left it behind on Monday.  He was very upset to see her son wearing it.   Without missing a beat, she glared into my eyes and said, “That jacket has been sitting in lost-and-found for weeks.  It is our policy to give those clothes away to charity after a month, but I saw that jacket and thought it was too good to give away, so it is ours now.”  My head nearly exploded.  “I think you are very mistaken,” I said as calmly as possible.  “I made that jacket for my son last weekend with my new sewing machine and he only wore it once.  It was never in the lost and found because we began looking for it the very next day.”

Rather than apologize, she called me a liar.  “You did not make that jacket!” she railed at me. “It was store bought.”  I explained that although the embroidery looks like commercial quality I could very easily produce both the machine and the cartridge with which I created the embellishment.  It did not matter whether I made it or not, as the issue was that it belonged to my son and not hers.  Furthermore, I argued, it clearly was not in the lost and found for weeks as I could produce the receipt from less than a week prior.  There was no brand of logic that could get through this twisted woman’s head.  I asked her if she realized that she was the manager of a business and that I was her customer; certainly stealing from your customers was no way to run a business.  I demanded that she contact the owners, refusing to leave the premises until they arrived.  I explained the situation to them and my desire to have my son’s property returned; all the while the manager continued to call me a liar, neglecting of course to address the issue of how the jacket got into her custody.   I looked at the owner and asked, “What possible reason would I have to lie about embroidering the jacket, and what possible difference does it make whether I did or not.  She took my son’s jacket and I want it back immediately.”  He also failed to react to this blatant breach of professionalism and decency.  No apologies.  No remedies.

I spent a long time talking with the owner of this so-called child-care establishment.  I suggested that the woman he left in charge of his business was morally bankrupt and was perhaps an inappropriate leader for a child-oriented service organization.  If she was stealing from the customers, I suggested, perhaps she was doing the same to him.  I showed him the receipt for the jacket and the embroidery cartridge with the Space Shuttle design, matching my son’s garment.  I laid out the timeline, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she had purloined the jacket.  He assured me that the jacket would be returned.  I told him that if she continued to work there they would lose my business.

The owners took no action against their corrupt manager.  It took a full two weeks until the jacket was returned in a brown paper bag without explanation or apology.  I immediately transferred my son to another after-school program.  At least a dozen other families followed suit. 

As much as we would like to believe that there is justice in this world, there are plenty of cases where jerks continue to run rampant.  It irritates me that that stupid woman still has the power to make me angry even today.   It is impossible to explain how people like that can look themselves in the mirror and not be repulsed by the ugliness.  In the end, integrity is all that matters; if only I had embroidered that on the shirt. 

Tomorrow's blog:  The Pianist

A Nice Epidemic

I get irritated at my husband when he flips channels during commercials.  With increasingly more annoying and insipid television programs (Snookie?  I rest my case), commercials are becoming the shining lights of television creativity.  I live for the E*TRADE ad featuring the precocious-yet-diapered toddler who treated his dog in a manner that is “frowned upon in this establishment.”  I am mesmerized by the self-indulgent yet gorgeous odyssey of luxury Cartier items evoking the Romanoffs and Mughal emperors.  The act of rolling down a window tempts me to ride through the neighborhood, face thrust outward, exclaiming “Wheeeeeee!”  I can no longer invoke the keyless features of my new car without envisioning a diminutive Darth Vader bringing a Volkswagen to life.

The commercial that touches me the deepest is a rather unremarkable series for Liberty Mutual.  In these commercials, strangers commit small acts of kindness to random others.  A child drops a toy and someone picks it up.  The person who witnesses this act is then inspired to move a man’s coffee cup from the edge of a table before it falls.  Stirred by this, a man stops his car to urge a woman across the street.  This leads a woman to push a man out of the way before a stack of boxes falls over on him.  The message is obvious, but the commercial is an abject failure as a marketing tool; I could not recall the company who was using this as a metaphor for their service and was forced to look up.  The unintended consequence, however, is that I began to notice how little people look out for each other.  Everywhere you go, people are tuned in to their smartphones, texting their way down the street, engaged in personal business in a manner that insulates them from the world—and the people—around them.  Social networking has replaced social interaction.  I am as guilty as the rest.  We are more attentive to photos posted by our high school friends than the elderly woman crossing the street in front of us.

Just for fun, I decided to see what would happen if I made a point of committing random acts of kindness.  For a full month, I treated the yellow light as if it meant slow down instead of speed up.  I yielded to others who reached the same checkout line at the same time.  I started saying ‘hello’ to the woman in the toll booth, or ‘how are you’ to the man at the post office.  I gestured to pedestrians, making it clear that I was stopping and that it was safe to proceed.  I asked the bank teller if she was having a good day so far.  I thanked the American Express phone attendant for her help.  I asked the town plumbing inspector if he was enjoying the lovely weather.   I held a grocery basket on a sloping parking lot so a woman could put her bags in her car.  I apologized to the woman at Costco for losing my card before asking for a new one.

In the greater scheme of things, none of these acts will end world hunger or cure cancer or bring home our troops.  But in each case, someone who was busily moving through their automatic, insulated life at the speed of business was visibly taken aback.  The jolt was small, but perceptible.  There is nothing quite so disarming than a person who insists on being nice when you are having a tough day.  I could see these people exhale, release tension from their shoulders, relax the frown muscles around their eyes, and in a few cases, stop to make actual eye contact with  me. 

The most remarkable part of this is that it made me feel better as well.  Suddenly my life was filled with personal contacts and friendly gestures in return.  I caught myself smiling one day while walking through the mall.  I stood a little taller.  My chronically painful knees did not hurt as much.  My blood pressure went down a little.  It makes good medicine.

This is an election year—a time when we once again consider who we would like to lead us.  I do not express personal political points of view, or evaluate those expressed by others.  One thing that I am beginning to consider, however, is the way candidates conduct themselves in public and with their families.  In this militarily-stretched, iphone-distracted, corruption-scarred, blitzed out world, I am getting tired of feeling weighed down by conflict and dishonesty.  Integrity is everything.  It is rare today to see people stepping up.  I hope we have not reached a point where acting with respect toward one another is beyond our capacity as human beings.  As it turns out, being nice—even as a proactive gesture—expends less personal capital than maintaining our defensive shields. 

To quote my husband, my little experiment lacks rigor and sufficient sample size to declare my findings statistically significant.  Suppose we solve that obstacle as well.  If each of us spent the next month committing small and random acts of kindness, what would we have? 

A good start.


Tomorrow's Blog:  The Pianist

Onward, Blogging Fool

Today (as I write) is April Fools’ Day.  It is also an important milestone for our intrepid blogger, as I have just crossed the one-fourth threshold of this writing enterprise.  With ninety-two posts in the can, I have just 274 remaining--including this one.  I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly of my blogging year so far.

First the good.  In my wildest dreams, I could not have anticipated the support I have received from friends around the world.  Most people are stealth readers, following loyally from the privacy of their homes and offices, not always drawing attention to the fact that they are engaged.  But when blogs are read in the forest and no one makes a sound, I still know that you all are reading, as the Blogger ticker reminds me that you are there.  Then, every once in a while, I receive a comment from a new constituency—a “like,” a “share,” or an email message from someone who I was unaware had been following along.  It is immensely gratifying to discover that I have touched a nerve or someone’s heart with my little stories.  The smallest acknowledgement is a boon to an aspiring writer.  I love hearing that my stories are stimulating discussions, or inspiring laughter, or moving you to tears.  The human experience is a rich tapestry; we are woven together by the smallest of threads.  And for someone like me, who has long felt that I was living inside a television sitcom, this is helping me to find some relevance and harmony in my own existence.

Now the bad.  What the heck was I thinking?  Before embarking on this self-imposed challenge, I considered the pros and cons for approximately six and a half minutes.  Clearly, this was a rash decision.  I have come to realize that most bloggers write, at most, once or twice a week.  Had I announced on New Year’s Day that I was going to post once a week for an entire year, it would have sounded like a commendable challenge.  No one would have thought me slothful for choosing a realistic target.   As it turns out, since the first of the year I have spent no less than twenty days on the road visiting my kids at college, or accompanying my husband on business trips.  Each blog has to be planned and executed, regardless of the other activities that cloud my life.  I am writing on planes, adding notes on potential topics over romantic dinners, waking up in the middle of the night to rewrite sections before they go live.   In fact, this blog is being written from a hotel lobby at Pebble Beach where, if you read my blog (see 3/29, The Golf War), you understand that this activity is far more enjoyable to me than the reason most people choose to visit here.  That daily deadline is a harsh taskmaster, but it is slowly become the pulse that drives my life forward.  And that is what this is all about.  A dear friend from college, who is a Wall Street warrior-turned-best-selling-author, told me that the key to being a writer is to write every day.  It takes a lot of discipline to be your own boss in the production of an intangible thing.  This structure creates accountability.  I feel your eyes bearing down upon me, keeping me productive. 

And the ugly.  Even Hemingway couldn’t be Hemingway every day.  When I am fortunate enough to have a backlog of blogs posted out into the future, I also have the luxury to proofread and wordsmith through several iterations.  Other days, not so much.  I like to refine my stories until I am satisfied, but sometimes my opportunity to let them “marinate” expires.  In the end, I do everything to make sure there is a post each day and that it is the best I can do under the circumstances.  Like life, those circumstances change wildly from day to day.  I hope my readers understand that those are the limitations of this medium. 

On the other hand, after writing 110,297 words I now realize that I have at least two books in me.  This process is going a long way toward helping my fictional ideas take shape.  I am looking forward to applying this discipline to those projects once this year has concluded successfully.  Knock wood.  Poo poo poo.

Some final thoughts.  I have learned a lot from this experience.  Here are some of those lessons:

There is a vast difference between telling stories and story-telling.
Honesty is easy to recognize but harder to realize.
There will always be dissenters and deniers; they are not my audience.
The definition of friendship is a person who reads what you write every day.
A year lived day by day is well spent; a year spent writing day by day is better in retrospect.

Tomorrow's blog:  A Nice Epidemic

Potties Field

When my daughter flashes one of her signature displays of unbreakable will, it instantly transports me back in time to our first mother-daughter conflict—indeed the eternal struggle that forever defines the parent-child dynamic:  potty training.  To say that my daughter was a tough nut to crack is an understatement.   Long past her third birthday she exhibited no interest in potty independence.  And why should she?  Today’s disposable diapers are so advanced in their absorption technologies that a child hardly knows when a biological event has taken place.  She was also immune to peer-pressure.  Just because everyone in her pre-school class had graduated to big-girl and big-boy status did not change her agenda one iota. 

Resolute though she was, she did not know with whom she was dealing.  Armed with the classics Once Upon a Potty and Everyone Poops, I planned my assault. I explained to my boss, himself the father of three boys, that I would be working from home for the next week.  Then I went shopping.   No girl is immune to the powers of beautiful lingerie.  I procured an assortment of tiny panties, each adorned with girlie themes from pink roses to Disney princesses.  She took one look and cooed, “Pretty, mommy!”

She loved the way the soft cotton felt against her body, its sleekness vastly superior to the bulky Pull-Ups.  When one of my staff came by mid-week to pick up something, she jumped out in front of him and lifted up her dress saying, “Look!  I have pretty panties!”  Oh brother, I thought.  I looked at the newly uninhibited monster I created, expressing her pride with a 360 degree view, worried that this could backfire if she were still exposing herself by the time she reached fourteen or fifteen.  Nonetheless, we pushed onward.  After a few false starts and a couple of teary episodes, our week of vigilance and consistency paid off.  She was on her way to becoming emancipated—and so was I. 

The following weekend, Grandma and Grampa came to visit for Father’s Day.  Back in those days, Atlanta was home to Expo, a giant Home Depot-owned concept store that eventually failed when a scaled back version was taken nationwide.  The original Expo blueprint, however, was home renovation Disneyland—a massive warehouse featuring top-of-the-line appliances and finishes for every corner of the home and patio.   This was not your father’s Home Depot—it was crack for the HGTV addict.  I could think of nothing that my dad would rather do on Father’s Day than roam the acres of this store perusing the latest fixtures and faucets, grills and garage doors, and cordless power tools.  At the same time, we were planning a master suite expansion on our second floor, putting us in the market for all manner of things: sinks, toilets, showerheads, faucets, and tile.

In our family, Home Depot expeditions are always a family affair.  We piled our three generations into the new minivan, ignoring the cliché we had become.  As we pulled up to Expo, I was focused on my father, prepared to be entertained by his utter enthrallment.   The store was laid out in quadrants, each a full-service design center for a different aspect of the house:  kitchen, bath, windows and doors, garden and patio.  We found ourselves at the intersection of bath and kitchen, uncertain which way to go first.  My daughter, who at this point had been ignored for a full five minutes, looked behind our backs and surveyed the scene.  “Potties!” she said lustily under her breath.  With that, she took off through my husband’s legs toward a large array of porcelain monuments.   Before we could catch her, she had dropped “trow” and climbed atop the fanciest of all the toilets, prepared to demonstrate her latest DIY skill to the public.

Running as fast as I could, I grasped my little princess just in time to avoid real humiliation.  Most of this went unnoticed by the clamoring public.  One salesman, who had witnessed the whole scene, was laughing so hard I feared he would need to excuse himself to the mensroom.   I tried my best to calm myself and praise my daughter for her initiative, afraid to spook her and reverse our progress, suggesting that she would be happier in a room where the potties had doors.

For the record, my daughter is still as stubborn and unyielding as ever.  She knows her mind and no one can tell her otherwise.  Nonetheless, her life is a bowl full of possibilities and she is flush with enthusiasm for what the world will bring her way.   

Tomorrow's blog:  Onward, Blogging Fool