Urban Mama

Father's Day Memories

Father's Day

is bittersweet.

is bitter, knowing you don't really have memories of your Papi but only flashes of what you think are memories based on what other people have told you about him. Growing up, you hated Father's Day and felt cheated every single year.

is sweet, knowing your own children have such a loving, kind, engaged father, who is always willing to... cook them a meal, tell them a story, ride bikes, pitch a tent, go exploring for cool bugs, take a hike, explain science, government, religion, and geography, and give them "kisses and cuddles."

I hope my kids are grateful of the blessing they have in their father.

Ten Things I Love About My Husband

My husband and I celebrated our 10th anniversary on June 2, 2011. As a joint gift to each other, we traveled to London and Paris sans kids for the 11 days leading up to our anniversary. Ten feels special and worthy of congratulations. Being married in double digits isn't easy, and it would be a Big Fat Lie to say that every day of those 10 years has been filled with the same level of optimism and passion as we felt on our honeymoon. Some downright awful things have happened. We've dealt with family stress. We've bickered a lot and occasionally fought. But we've also laughed so hard we hiccoughed with exhaustion and cried happy tears at the sight of each other holding our three newborn children. Through it all, I remain convinced that falling in love with and marrying my best friend was the smartest decision I ever made.

In the spirit of starting out our second decade of marriage on a blissful note, I'm going to name 10 things I love about my husband. No need to look away, siblings, these are all PG rated.

1. The man knows his way with a map. He may not have been an Eagle Scout (like my stepsister's husband), but his years of Scouting and general sense of exploration make him a natural leader wherever we go. I've never wondered "how do we get from... the Marais to the Eiffel Tower or from our campsite to the hiking trail or the mall to our parking space" because he always knows. I, on the other hand, routinely get off of elevators at familiar places and walk in the wrong direction.
2. The man can talk about anything. I'm not saying he's a Genius, and he has only beaten me at Scrabble twice in our entire marriage + courtship (15 years!), but he reads enough periodicals and nonfiction books (and half-listens to all my movies and pop-culture chatter) to talk about almost anything. He's not an expert, but he can hold his own -- and charm his way -- through a conversation with new people.
3. He complements me. Notice the "e." He's not a big complimenter, but he does pick up the Ying to my Yang. I'm observant of people but not places (hence my nonexistent sense of direction), and I read fiction and remember birthdays and know random, obscure details about everyone I've ever met. He reads historical tomes and knows how to tie knots and remembers the differences between architectural styles and can take a bicycle apart and put it together again. I can list every movie Denzel Washington has ever made, and he can list all of the Senators. We make a kick-ass team at Trivial Pursuit.
4. He's funny. Even when I protest too much and occasionally shush him, I can't deny that he's a funny, funny man, and he's always good for a laugh.
5. He doesn't take himself too seriously. I've met more ridiculously Arrogant men with over-sized Egos than I care to acknowledge, and while I wouldn't call my husband humble, he's self-confident without being a Big Jerk (to others at least; he can, I admit, be slightly condescending when talking to me!).
6. He calls me on my Crazy. It's not always pleasant, but he knows when to humor me and when to confront me if I'm being irrational or oversensitive or generally a mad woman. He could just ignore me, but he cares enough to let me know (sometimes gently, sometimes not-so-gently), that I need to take a look at how I'm acting, and I'm thankful for the checks and balances.
7. He's handy. No, he's not going to single-handedly rewire our house, but he can assemble furniture; fix electronics and appliances; and act the role of family IT consultant without too much fuss. He doesn't panic when there's a storm and the lights go out -- he just gets our emergency bag and doles out the flashlights.
8. He appreciates my "gifts." Hmmm, those quote marks look kind of naughty, but I mean my accomplishments, my talents, my work -- whether with our children or professionally. When I had my first review in the Washington Post earlier this Spring, he ran out and bought a bunch, so we could save the clip, even though it's available online. When I told him a few weeks ago that I want to write a YA novel, he didn't laugh and say "Suuuuure." He said "Do it!"
9. He gets me. We're different (what partners aren't), but he understands me and takes care of me and knows when I need a cuddle or a kind word or am grieving for my mother or fed up with the housekeeping or frustrated with the kids. I know I'm the most important person in his life, and that he's devoted to our marriage.
10. He loves musicals. "The Simpsons." "Battlestar Galactica." "Lost." U2. Bruce Springsteen. Arcade Fire. Stevie Wonder. HBO documentaries. Classical music "hits." Art museums. Mumford and Sons... etc. etc. etc. He forgives me my continued commitment to "Grey's Anatomy" and Harry Potter fanfiction, and I forgive his need to watch "How It's Made" and "MythBusters" incessantly, because we can share in so many pop-culture loves together. It seems trivial, I know, but seeing as we have faith and politics in sync, our cultural interests needed to gel as well. Thank God.

 

Picture: From our afternoon tea at the Langham Hotel's Palm Court.

My Daughter's Questions About Weddings and Marriage

My daughter (pictured, with three friends from dance class).

I write a lot more about her than my boys, I realize. I think it's because she's a much more fiery spirit than her sweet, funny (albeit occasionally stroppy) older brother, and her adorably tyrannical baby brother (OK, he's three, but he'll forever be The Baby).

Recently, she's begun asking a lot of questions about weddings ("Do girls always have to wear white?," "If two girls get married, who wears the dress?," "Why don't you ever wear your wedding dress?," "How do you become a princess?"). It is obviously thanks to all of the Royal Wedding hoopla and my upcoming 10th anniversary, which we're celebrating with a trip to London and Paris.

Some of the questions are easy to answer ("No"; "Whoever wants to wear a dress"; "It's in storage in case you want to wear it one day"; "You either have to be born one or fall in love with a Prince who asks you to marry him"), but some of her questions about marriage beyond the wedding day are more difficult to address. She asks about our friends who are separated but still friends. She asks who gets the kids when parents don't live together anymore. She asks what makes parents stop loving each other, and she asks why every day her father and I have "fights."

The thing is, my husband and I don't have "fights" every day -- we have spirited discussions or debates that range from the banal -- whether we should buy a pocket camera as a back-up to our DSLR -- to the political -- why the Osama Bin Laden raid has stirred up a lot of hypocrisy and hurt -- to the superficial -- why funny men in Hollywood can be unattractive but not women, period. We're not even talking about these things in her presence, necessarily, but she picks up on the fact that our conversations can turn into debates, and it frightens her. We've had to explain that we're not mad at each other, we just both have strongly held opinions (about everything) and that's how we communicate.

She also sees us hug and kiss and hold hands, but I'm worried that she perceives our discussions as fights. But my husband and I aren't the type to agree about everything or have quiet, whispered conversations. So what are we to do? We're not yelling or being abusive, it's just the way we talk. We were best friends before we started dating, and part of our friendship was based in engaging in this ongoing debate.

I realize everyone interacts with their spouse differently, but sometimes I worry that she'll remember these passionate conversations more than she'll remember the way her father and I take care of each other, show compassion to each other, work as partners for the good of our family.

New Job, New Budget, New Family Life

Thank you to TurboTax for sponsoring my writing about household finances.Learn more about how TurboTax can help you find every tax deduction you deserve. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

My husband and I are not financial wizards. Unlike some of our good friends we don't have MBAs from Ivy League business schools, could never take up professional accounting as mid-career shifts, and aren't well-versed in whatever famous financial advisers like Suze Orman or Dave Ramsay or whoever that Rich Dad/Poor Dad guy is suggest. Our parents were no help -- mine being a doctor's widow who was forced to enter the workforce for the first time at 38, and his being Chinese-Vietnamese immigrants who lost their fortunes during the Vietnam War only to find themselves taking clerical jobs at a major insurance company for 30 years.

As a consequence of being firmly humanities-based individuals without financially savvy parents, we've always struggled with figuring out the best way to handle our finances. In our 16-year relationship & 10 year marriage, we've gone from broke undergraduates to well-paid media professionals to nearly broke newlyweds (my husband went to law school while I "supported" us on a $47,000 a-year job) to a very-well-paid attorney and online content editor.

But we're no longer what I would call "very well paid." My husband left his private-firm career for a government job that's an amazing opportunity and a perfect fit for his interests and skills, but a 30%-plus pay cut from BigLaw. To make the new (awesome) opportunity work, we made several decisions about our spending habits to lessen the blow of our new take-home income:

• Cook more/eat out less. As New York City ex-pats to DC, we were used to picking up the phone for food delivery, but since the options are limited here to pizza and Chinese, we -- and by we, I mean *I* -- often bought take out during the week. I have to admit that there were many weeks we ate "bought" food up to four times a week. Now we plan out menus, do a big shop at the grocery store, and eat in every week-night, unless there's some exception, like a birthday or school fundraiser or the like.
• Have Communal Meals on Weekends: Instead of going to restaurants at least three times a weekend, we now go to friends' houses or have people over for dinner or brunch. It feels like eating out, because we're socializing, and our friends cook for us/help us cook, and it's much, much, much more affordable. Since most of our friends have kids, we just feed them separately, let the little ones run around, and have our own grown-up dinner at the table. We've also had bagels & newspapers brunch with close friends, which is a fun throwback to our New York days.
• Borrow, Borrow, Borrow: Instead of spending on new books, we've been visiting the library every week. Instead of buying new stuff for our kids, we ask friends if they have hand-me-downs. Instead of
• Checks & Balances: We now check with each other about making purchases. We used to only check in with each other about big splurges, but now we talk about even small purchases just to make sure we both agree it's something we should get. We don't do this in an oppressive way, but it did take some adjustment from automatically buying every little kitchen gadget or clothing accessory to discussing it beforehand.
• Check THE Balances: It seems obvious, but we now pay a lot more attention to our daily spending, our bank balance, how much we're shuffling to our savings accounts.

It's like on Weight Watchers, when I write down everything I eat. You only know how much you spend when you account for everything you buy! This is our financial "diet," and we're already seeing results.

 

 

 

 

Marital Share and Share Alike

It goes without saying that marriage requires a lot of sharing -- of bookshelves, closet space, finances, bodily fluids, and the like. But lately I've noticed that aside from money, of which my husband earns far more than I, I share a lot more with him than he does with me, and it's always been that way. Just today, he grabbed the first scarf he saw and didn't bother to notice it was, in fact, mine.

It started ages ago with little things -- mostly with my unisex T-shirts: the Cornell shirt I was given during "Minority Weekend 1994" and Columbia's pre-orientation backpacking program (COÖP). From there, it moved on to my Sony Discman (remember those?); my favorite Art Institute of Chicago mug; and my Entertainment Weekly (first full-time job!) gym bag. Over the years, I've discovered that thanks to my swag-laden occupation, there's a never-ending supply of stuff the husband snags for himself.

If you were to bump into my husband on the street, you'd probably see him in a movie or film-festival T-shirt and cap. And I kinda love that this is what our relationship is -- exchanging everything we can with each other, from the mundane to the most intimate. 

Crying Through Frontline's Assisted Suicide Special

Tonight I watched PBS' Frontline special "The Suicide Tourist," which detailed the final days of a 59-year-old American man named Craig Ewert, who chose to die with the help of the controversial Swiss death-with-dignity organization Dignitas. By Craig's side throughout his six-month struggle with ALS and on the final day of his life was his beloved wife of nearly 40 years, Mary.

At first it seemed as though Mary was almost eerily zen about her husband drinking a barbiturate cocktail that would kill him. She hugs him, kisses him on the cheek and wishes him a "Safe Journey" moments before he drinks the lethal dose of medicine. Mary then massages Craig's feet and moves on the bed to stroke his hand and chest as he closes his eyes one final time. It was incredibly moving, and I was in awe of her courage to stay so at peace while her partner in life died.

When they interviewed Mary after her husband's death, she explained through teary eyes that in some ways she had lost her husband -- the healthy, vibrant man she married -- six months earlier, when he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. She added that although she had spent a great deal of time with her husband as his daily caregiver in the months preceding his death, that was not the way she would remember him. She would remember the amazing 37 years they shared before he was too sick to walk or breathe without aid or shave himself or hold a phone or wave goodbye. She was supportive of his ultimate decision to die before he was completely paralyzed and lost the ability to swallow, and my heart ached for Mary as she got in the Swiss taxi back to the airport... alone and widowed and probably relieved that Craig was no longer suffering.

I don't mean to write about Craig's death to open the door for a debate about assisted suicide, but only to share my awe at how a loving wife could come to accept her husband's decision to die on his own terms. There were no hysterics from Mary -- just a tender embrace, a short goodbye, and the promise to join Craig wherever he was (they were both agnostics) some day in the future.

I've been with my husband 14 years and married for nearly nine. I can't fathom how difficult it would be to live without him. I think about my mother, who was widowed at 37 after my father's asthma attack too an unexpectedly ugly turn into cardiac arrest. Poof. One moment she thought she had another three decades with my father and the next he was gone. It might as well have been an accident that took my father's life, because it was just as sudden. And my mother was numb and aloof and shattered.

If I had to choose between my mother's widowhood and Mary's, I'd choose Mary's -- and by that, I certainly don't mean to imply that I hope my husband contracts a terminal disease and then commits physician-assisted suicide. I mean I admire the way Mary was able to come to terms with and accept her husband's death in a way I know my mother wasn't fully able to after my father died. I want those Final Gifts, that last goodbye, that moment of knowing this is the end of your body but not the end of our love.

Pixar's Marital Advice

One of the things I loved most about UP was its opening sequence chronicling the friendship, romance, and marriage of Carl and Ellie. In just a few minutes Pixar's latest animated film captured the essence, the intimacy, the dreams deferred but not forgotten, of a long and loving marriage. Most of the sequence is wordless, and I couldn't hold back the tears by the end of it.

My husband and I were also best friends first. He was not my Edward*, my obsession-at-first-sight. He was my Ron, my Harry, my close-and-then-best friend I went to cafes, movies, plays, restaurants with all.of.the.time. When our romantic relationship finally began my sophomore year in college, we already knew all the secret-handshake stuff about each other -- like the fact my husband recoils from the film adaptation of Cabaret, because creepy Joel Grey in full-on Weimar costume and make-up freaked him out as a kid. (That's about all I can share without being considered a turncoat). 

In UP, life (mostly bills and other mundanities) gets in the way of Carl and Ellie's lifelong dream to visit remote Paradise Falls together. In my marriage, our own bills multiplied by our three loved-but-unexpected children have made it difficult for us to fulfill some of our dreams, to go on certain adventures (say, traveling extensively), but in the meantime, like Carl eventually realizes, we have had so many other adventures together. And no matter how long it takes, we'll make it to Paradise Falls one day. I know we will.

*Yeah, I read the Twilight books

Coos for Abuela

My husband and I have been apart for 15 days. It's the longest we've ever been apart. The kids and I are in Florida while he holds up the homefront (and racks up the billable hours). We knew it would be difficult to be separated for so long, but it was necessary for me (and the kids) to spend this time with Mami and the rest of my family. Since none of us knows what the exact prognosis is for Mami's deteriorating health (and who ever does?), the husband and I chose not to do a week-long vacation anywhere and instead to drive down here, to my older sister's little exurban town outside of Tampa, so the kids could see their Abuela every day, even for just a short while.

Yesterday the baby turned five months old (he's seven weeks old in the photo). I reminded Mami, who couldn't believe it had been FIVE months since he was born. I remember, after her colostomy surgery in January, how panicked I was -- unable to sleep at night -- at the thought of losing her before the baby was born. I called my friend Jen and told her I didn't know how to give birth in a world where I didn't have a mother. But here we are five months after my third baby swam out into the world. He's here, growing and changing every day. And she's here too, thank God. So it was only appropriate that on this particular monthly birthday, he should save his best coos and brightest smiles for his Abuela. Maybe even he recognized how special the moment was.

Later today I am finally going to spend most of my time working on my video project with Mami. I haven't done much of that since we arrived, because it didn't feel right. Instead, we've stayed up late talking, watching the Olympics, gossiping about celebrities, and just sitting together. We don't get to do it for long stretches, because the kids or her painkillers or my work interrupt or interfere. But after all the kids go to sleep, we have our night-owl conversations.

I want to ask her to fill in the blanks. To answer questions and set records straight. To remember recipes and important dates. To say something the grandchildren should hear and take to heart. I know it will be difficult for both of us, but we need to be brave. I need to ask the questions, so she can provide the answers. We can't wait any longer. My husband arrives Friday, and we leave Saturday. I only have two days, but if I focus, if she's willing, we can create something beautiful for the day when this cooing baby grows up and asks about his Abuela.

A Year In the Life

We moved to the DC burbs one year ago last week. Here's a quick look at the past year in Urban Mama land:

• April  2007: We tearily bid farewell to our Brooklyn home, our New York lives, family and friends and move to downtown Silver Spring, Md. Our new apartment is 300 square-feet larger but 300 times more boring than our former place. The kids go to a cooperative preschool in DC; The husband starts working at his new lawfirm, and I deal with navigating life as a freelancer in DC.
• May 2007: I make my first return trip to NYC for the Tribeca Film Festival.The husband and kids join me, and we visit many friends in Brooklyn and my brother's family in Queens. I cry through the streets of Tribeca wondering why we moved.
• June  2007: We discover a family friend's niece is a realtor down here and start looking for a house. The husband and I celebrate our sixth anniversary. The kids and I enjoy going to the apartment building's pool most afternoons. We return to NYC a second time to house and dog-sit for an acquaintance in Brooklyn. We once again feel seriously homesick.
• July 2007: We find a house we really like but by the time we're ready to to bid, someone else has already put in a contract. The following week, I find a newly listed home, and my awesome realtor gets me a preview. After the husband visits during the Open House, we decide to put in a contract the following day. The contract is accepted, and the closing is set for August. We go to NYC a third time and live it up once again. The husband and I go on our one and only flight of the year -- at trip to New Mexico for our dear friend Elizabeth's wedding.
  
• Aug. 2007: I quickly realize the "flu" I think I have feels eerily like first-trimester symptoms. But surely that's not it, since I have an IUD. The husband remembers we have an old, unopened pregnancy test I can take. There's a faint, faint, barely-there line. After four more tests and a trip to the hospital, we come to terms with the fact that I am, in fact, pregnant. We close on our house, and I nearly vomit at the proceedings. The Schmoop starts kindergarten.
  
• Sept. 2007: We move into our new house, and I realize that there is no way I can unpack while still having the actue pukeyness of first trimester life. I decide to have a homebirth and meet my amazing midwife for the first time. We rack up a lot of new-homeowner expenses. My mom comes to visit for the first time since we moved. I turn 31.
  
• Oct. 2007: No more morning, noon & night sickness. I start getting to know my neighbors and realize this suburbs thing isn't as bad as it first seemed. We celebrate our first Halloween (as parents) outside of Brooklyn. Despite missing the crowded streets of NYC, we're delighted not to have to deal with mobs of kids outside of every stoop.
• Nov. 2007: We go back to New York for the Marathon, where we stay directly on the marathon's path at our friends' brownstone.The Schmoopette turns three! We host our first holiday -- Thanksgiving with 2/3rds of my siblings and their families. The cousins have a ball running around the house. I cry when my last sibling leaves town and wish we all lived in the same city.
• Dec. 2007: We host our second holiday -- Christmas with my mom, my in-laws and one of the husband's aunts and her family of three. For New Year's, my oldest brother comes down with his brood and we thank God for my mom making it another year with cancer.
• Jan. 2008: My mom has to have surgery that leaves her with a colostomy. My siblings and I are on the phone with each other several times a day. She pulls through and stays at my sister's in Central Florida. I feel helpless being 30+ weeks pregnant and unable to go down and help.
• Feb. 2008: The Schmoop, our Superbowl Sunday 2001 baby, turns six on Superbowl Sunday. The husband turns 33 three days later. We have an un-Valentine's Day "Lost" celebration, but our plans for a last-hurrah weekend away go to pot when the husband's case schedule interferes. I have early contractions and am advised to stay on modified bedrest for a few days. No baby, though.
• March 2008: We (well, OK, *I*) have our third child in a birthtub in our basement rec-room. It's my most fulfilling, empowering birth experience. Life with a newborn begins again after a three year and four month break. We all fall in love with our new itty bitty boy. Our family feels complete, but I still yearn for another birth and a baby sister for the Schmoopette. The husband feels quite differently and schedules a vasectomy.
• April 2008: Here we are one year later, and although we still (and maybe will always) miss living in New York, we have grown to love our little butter-yellow home with the white picket fence. We have many blessings to count down here -- our neighbors, our old friends, our new friends. And our family is larger by one tiny person we all adore.

10 Things I've Learned From Abigail Adams

OK, so not Abigail Adams so much as Laura Linney's portrayal of the second First Lady on HBO's entertaining AND educational mini-series "John Adams"... I encourage all of you to watch it

1. A good wife knows how to be critical without being condescending or hurtful:"You do not need to  quote great men to show you are one."
2. A good mother knows that sometimes you have to let a child have life-changing experiences, even when those experiences are far away from you. (She makes John take John Quincy to Europe with him, so he won't grow up a "narrow-minded New England man.")
3. Women have dealt with workaholic husbands for centuries. It's not a "modern" situation for a woman to feel like a single mother while her husband is off at work -- in John's case helping to create the foundation of an independent nation.
4. Mothers must never shy away from making difficult decisions when it comes to their children's health and safety. (She requests the live smallpox vaccine even though there is a risk she or her four children may contract the disease from the vaccine.).
5. It's OK to cry when you miss your traveling husband, but there's no need to whine about it.
6. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt are not the only First Ladies to be considered their husbands' "closest adviser"
7. Just because you choose to dress-down for the daily practicalities of domestic life doesn't mean you can't clean-up and dress-up under the right circumstances.
8. Sometimes it's OK for your children to see you upset (like when Nabby sees Abigail furiously scrubbing the windows, because she hasn't heard from John).
9. When you have multiple children, it's important to encourage them to take care of each other (like when Nabby temporarily contracts smallpox or how Charles watches over the baby).
10. A good marriage requires meaningful communication (Abigail and John's letters to each other are long and detailed), patience, humor and passion.