Category — Uncategorized

I went from a lifetime of rarely crying at the theater to a year of crying almost every time I’m at the theater. The latest was a concert performance of Pippin.

It was the play I was most looking forward to seeing in 2020, but the performance was moved due to the pandemic. Then it was moved again due to the pandemic. Then it was transferred into a concert performance and canceled again. Then rescheduled and canceled for our performance because half the cast had COVID. Then recast with our tickets on a new night. But when we finally heard the first bars of music begin on our fifth try seeing the show, I burst into tears. It just felt so huge to be there. To finally be there. After waiting for so long.

They made it a concert-plus performance, incorporating some of the choreography that we would have seen if they had gotten to hold the first performance over two years ago. It was one of my top five nights of theater ever. Would it have been so remarkable if I hadn’t waited so long? Who knows.

But that’s kind of the point: The pandemic has made everything feel so much bigger once the thing you’ve been waiting for finally happens.

It has super-sized the emotions around seeing people or doing something commonplace again for the first time in a long time. It makes me feel like every mundane experience draws all of my emotions to the surface. And I’m not sure how long this phenomenon will last.

Carolyn Hax does it again. Well, actually, one of her commenters does it again. Carolyn gave great advice, but then one of her commenters followed up with an even better point.

The question asker is struggling with the idea that forming a new plan (buying a home) means giving up her earlier thoughts for how she wanted her life to turn out (travel). Carolyn gives her a few ways to be okay with a change in plans.

And then, at the end of the column, another person pipes in:

“If there’s anything that wasn’t in your plan that you’re happy about, then you know the ‘plan’ isn’t the only path to satisfaction.”

Yessssssss.

Here is to Plan Bs and the fact that life probably contains more plans off the assumed path than on.

One of the best weekends of this year has been a 16-hour SAT cramming session. I didn’t think it would go well, which is probably why its awesomeness was intensified. When you have no clue how something will go and suspect it will not be able to work and fall apart, you are doubly excited when it exceeds your wildest expectations.

I bought an SAT practice book for the twins a few years ago and encouraged them to read it and practice many many many times, including last summer when they had a huge chunk of time to do so. I know they’ve picked it up a few times, but they haven’t really attacked it with the gusto I hoped when I brought it home.

So I set aside the weekend before the SAT for a whole family cram session. We would read the book together, eat snacks, and generally walk away from the table feeling super prepared.

I had no clue how we would accomplish this; just that it involved the four of us, the book, and the kitchen table.

*******

I kicked it off with a quote: “The great Lionel Ritchie once said, ‘Aptitude plus attitude determines altitude.’ And that is what we need to remember here. You have the aptitude, but you also need to have a good attitude.”

I was pretty freakin’ proud of that opening.

“Who is Lionel Ritchie?” the Wolvog asked.

“You got that from People magazine. I read that same issue,” the ChickieNob informed me.

“It doesn’t matter where I got it,” I rushed on. “What matters is that it’s wise. And it’s our guiding thought for today. There are very few people out there who would give up a weekend to help. Show me you care.”

And they did. They brought their A-game. I’m not sure what exactly an “A-game” is, but whatever it is, that is what they brought. One person served as note-taker. One person made flashcards. One person skimmed the book and read the highlights aloud. One person ate bamba. We moved through the roles seamlessly, accruing 30 pages of typed notes and a huge stack of flashcards. We did the verbal test one day and the math the other, taking a practice test after each cram session. They brought their score up over 100 points.

So they felt amazing. Which was good, but THAT wasn’t the point. The point was that everyone used their strengths to bring the others over the finish line. The twins continued to study together the next two nights, spreading out in one of their rooms to use the flashcards. They went into the test feeling like if they didn’t do well, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Did I really want to review math formulas I haven’t needed for 30 years? Of course not. But watching them laugh their way through my comma rules, remembering how fleeting time feels right now, that we are coming up to a day where we won’t be around the kitchen table but instead scattered in different locations, made me want to bottle it so I could keep drinking in the moment in the future. The best I can do is capture it for myself with words.

I appreciated this recent piece in Refinery29 asking people to rethink the phrase “starting a family.” Because anytime you have more than one person committed to each other, you have a family. A couple is a family. Three generations under one roof is a family. A single parent with a kid is a family.

Sadhbh O’Sullivan writes,

Family is a surrogate term for having children: bringing in a new generation is ‘starting a family’; a focus of feminist liberation is that women shouldn’t have to choose between work and ‘family’ (aka having children); and questions about whether or not you’re trying to get pregnant are couched in the more indirect phrase: ‘When are you starting your family?’

She points out that once you pause and look at this idea — the idea that children are what makes a family — you are forced to consider all of the implications.

It also makes you wonder about another common phrase in our community — I know I use it all the time — “family building.” On one hand, you’re not implying a starting point or negating the family’s existence before kids. You’re adding on or expanding upon a foundation. But still in the same vein as “starting a family.”

Food for thought. What do you think?

I am wearing new glasses.

Four pairs of new glasses, to be exact.

Just not all at the same time.

*******

On a Monday morning, Josh leaned over to hug me while he was standing and I was sitting. The edge of his glasses hit the lens of my glasses and left a long, deep scratch.

I let my glasses prescription lapse during the pandemic, so the first step was getting an appointment to have an eye exam. Not so easy. They weren’t going to be able to see me for a month. I took an appointment for the end of April with the promise that they would put me on the waitlist for a cancellation. Probably because I was crying. Before I could log off the computer, an appointment popped up for that day. I jumped in the car and drove over immediately wearing my prescription sunglasses.

But that wasn’t the hard part. That was the super easy part, it turns out. Because all of our usual glasses places were taking between one week and three weeks to make glasses.

The first place only allowed me to look during the 20 minutes allowed for my appointment, and I could only try on five pairs. I could only ask to try on the pairs when I had chosen the five pairs I wanted to try. By the time I had chosen a second pair I wanted to try, I forgot where the first pair was located on the wall. I went with the first thing I tried on even though they were purple. Purple! But I was desperate for glasses.

Though I realized after I got home that the man never measured my pupils, and I spent from 2 AM to 4 AM concerned the glasses wouldn’t be properly aligned with my eyes. The man snarled at me over the phone the next day that the information was in my file, and he didn’t need to re-measure. Note to self: Always ask them to measure my pupils… anyway.

I found another place that promised they would make the glasses the same day if I could get there before five o’clock. We got there at 3:30 pm, but the time frame suddenly jumped to 24 hours because… shoulder shrug. The man talked me into trying progressives, something that filled me with dread between the hours (once again) of 2 AM and 4 AM as I worried that I would finally have a pair of glasses and they would make me dizzy.

This was a worry-ful month.

The end of the story is that I ended up with four pairs of glasses: The purple ones, which came in a week later because he put them in as a rush order (probably due to the whole pupil measuring situation). The progressives. The new prescription in my old sunglasses. And a second pair of distance-only glasses with my old frames once I realized the new progressives made me feel dizzy.

Here’s the thing: Humans can make glasses in an hour. There are so many things you can’t make at short notice, but glasses — except for unusual prescriptions — are not one of those things. And people cannot get by without glasses. The world needs to bring back the one-hour eyeglass places. Sloppy huggers depend on them.