Life–at warp speed

It's the last day of school, a cause for celebration of the impending freedom that comes with summer. Yet I'm feeling the pull of life zipping me along at lightning speed. Isn't there any way to slow down this ship?

As of today, I am officially the mom of a senior in high school. What an exciting time for him! And yet he's also adjusting to the new world order. Last weekend he began work at his first job as a dishwasher at the Winking Lizard in Avon. We paid a visit to the bank to open up his first checking account now that he gets direct deposit (now that's a change from when I was a kid).

He listened carefully as the bank manager explained online banking, receiving his updates via text, his options with respect to new banking regulations (we opted to have his debit card declined when over the balance rather than suffer the cost of overdraft fees) and the responsibilities that come with a first checking account.

As we walked out of the bank, I told him he was a big boy now. He was suddenly very quiet. I asked what was wrong and he replied, "Life is suddenly moving very fast."

Wow! Yes. It. Is.

Ryan turns 18 in November, time to register to vote and for the draft. He's making decisions about his future--what career to pursue, what college to attend, whether or not to pursue playing football in college.

He's our first, so for better or worse, he's our guinea pig. Hopefully, we haven't done too badly by him. I know that I couldn't be more proud to be his mom. But in the quiet moments of the day I ponder pushing the pause button on life. Actually, it doesn't even have to stop, but I wish it could slow down. I just want to marinate for a while.


Another sign of the speed of life

Today, my parents are off on a month-long trip out West. They are both officially retired. My dad retired a year ago, but my mom just retired from MetroHealth on Wednesday. After years of angst about the security of their golden years, she has embraced the freedom. She called me Wednesday night, as giddy as a young girl at the prospects ahead. I couldn't be happier for them.

Safe journey, Mom and Dad.

Tuesday Tidbits: Why Joe Biden rocks, WAPO Wonder bread, power and sex in the church and another broken bone

Why Joe Biden rocks
I've been a fan of Sen. Joe Biden's for one simple reason: he is a no-nonsense guy unafraid to speak his mind. It's a shame his presidential run didn't get very far ironically in part because of his forthrightness. If you missed his op-ed in last Friday's Wall Street Journal, I suggest you give it a look. There's also a video bit on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program below. Biden for veep? Secretary of State?

He does a nice job of talking about the current administration's squandered opportunities. There's this:

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the "war on terrorism" that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

And this:

Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win. (Bold is mine.)

Wonder Bread at WAPO op-ed
Last week was one of those weeks when I was working in triage mode getting through various deadlines so I missed getting some things posted that caught my eye. One was WAPO ombud Deborah Howell's look at the complexion of the paper's op-ed pages.

I love the Post, but I have to agree that its op-ed pages are so vanilla that I tend not to read them very often. The old tucks have been holding court so long (and vociferously) that I'm sure there's a "why bother" mentality of some would-be contributors.

But the answer to why bother is that this nation desperately needs to hear new voices. It's the only way to ensure our democracy, which frankly feels "less than" these days. And that's partly because we've been living under an administration that labels citizens as unpatriotic for having a difference of opinion. I saw a bumper sticker on a car in the Bay Village Library today that said, and I'm paraphrasing: Dissent is the truest form of patriotism. If you know anything of Bay Village, you know that it just warms my heart to know that there are few others like me in this town.

A variation of the same could be said of the Catholic church.

Power and sex in the Catholic church
On Thursday, June 5, Cleveland-based FutureChurch welcomes Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson who will speak on his book, "Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus." Father Donald Cozzens, who used to be a frequent celebrant at my church and is now teaching at John Carroll University, wrote the forward. The public lecture will be held at 7 p.m. at 3430 Rocky River Drive.

This is one of only 10 stops on his U.S. tour. He's been banned from speaking on church property in some places and word is Cleveland Bishop Richard Lennon is not pleased with his appearance here in Cleveland, but (at least for now) is allowing it to take place.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles Archdiocese banned him because he believes his work is counter to doctrinal teaching. I wonder if Mahony has even read the book. Here's what he wrote to Robinson.

I have come to learn that you new book is being investigated by the Australian Bishops' Conference because of concerns about doctrinal errors and other statements in the book contrary to Church teaching.

I have also learned that His Eminence, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops, has urged you to cancel your visit to the United States.

Consequently, I am hereby requesting that your cancel you visit to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles now set for June 12, 2008. Canon 763 makes it clear that the Diocesan Bishop must safeguard the preaching of God's Word and the teachings of the Church in his own Diocese. Under the provisions of Canon 763, I hereby deny you permission to speak in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

What are they so afraid of that they would seek to deny someone's opportunity to have a voice? More to the point: WWJD?

Another broken bone
My little Mikey broke his wrist on Friday while riding his bike home from a friend's house. A very kind mom drove him and his bike home and I wish I knew who she was so I could properly thank her. (I was at my neighbor's and she had left by the time my older boys found me.) Today he is sporting a royal blue cast that goes above his elbow and is already filled with signatures from his friends and teachers. He wouldn't let me sign it first because he didn't want me to spoil the clean look. So I signed after school in very large lettering on the under side of his arm, "LOVE, MOM (smiley face)."

Fortunately, we are only looking at a total of four weeks for this injury and at most, some lost baseball games, a week or two of three-on-three summer hoops and some pool time.

My baby must have been on my brain because I had one of those bizarre dreams in the early dawn today where I was getting everyone off to school—high school and middle school—when a 2-year-old version of Mikey came around the corner and said, "Hi, Mama." And a surprised me said, "Hi, Baby Boy." It was so real that I could see and smell his little toddler face, with his precious little cheeks, his chubby bare feet and his long, fluttery eyelashes.

It was the very best kind of sweetness. Unfortunately, at a beefy 9 years old, there's no way I could balance him on my hip these days.




Word of the day
Manichean: a believer in religious or philosophical dualism
Example: "You're either with us or against us." — President George W. Bush

Lighting a candle for Stephie

Bay Village tonight mourns the passing of 7-year-old Stephanie "Stephie" Lufkin. She was a first-grader at Normandy Elementary and the daughter of Bay Middle School sixth-grade teacher Katie Lufkin and her husband, Doug. Her Aunt Kelly is a photographer and has been capturing photos posted on flickr for the past few days that will break your heart.

Here's the obit on Stephie's grandmother and children's author Sara Holbrook's blog.

We're holding our children a little tighter tonight.

Superheroes in the freezer

Maybe you need to have boys to appreciate the humor of this piece in Christian Science Monitor. But I laughed out loud, picturing the Office of the Director, Family Intelligence Agency (er, Mom) opening a leftover container to find a headless Han Solo action figure mixed in with the meatloaf. Boys! Sheesh! Reminds me of The supercollider in my basement.

There's a new writer in town...

... and her name is Michelle O'Neil.

If you get a moment today, please stop by Full Soul Ahead written by Michelle O'Neil and check out her magnificent, soulful writing.

She's new to Cleveland, having moved here from Virginia earlier this summer. She found me by Googling Cleveland writers. And she's been kind enough to read and comment regularly here on Creative Ink.

We met for coffee at Dewey's at Shaker Square last week and had a lovely conversation. Originally a journalist, she went to school to try doing something more meaningful like nursing.

Today she combines both aspects of her professional life into some of the richest, most personal writing. Her inspiration comes from her children Riley and Seth.

To get a glimpse at how beautiful a child with special needs can be, check out this entry.

Mostly, I hope you'll take a moment to welcome her to town. She's a beautiful addition to our writing community.

Welcome, Michelle!

I wasn't gonna comment, but...

I think it's fair to say that objectively speaking country singer Faith Hill is a beautiful woman. That she's 39 (about to turn 40 in September, much like yours truly) and has three children only adds to her beauty. So I wonder how she feels, especially given that she has three daughters, about her likeness being altered so dramatically on the cover of Redbook?

Gawker's Jezebel uncovered this "Photoshop of Horrors" and uses animation and a second numerically annotated version to show us how Faith was airbrushed into being on its July cover.

Of course the editors defend the alterations, and of course she's in an image-conscious industry. But don't you think it's the responsibility of celebrity women to push for a true likeness of themselves (ala Kate Winslet and GQ) and of smart editors to oblige?

Are we that horrified by crow's feet?

A kindred spirit

"The tensions finally took their toll. I consistently put in extra hours; the office consistently scheduled meetings outside my allotted time. Then, one week, I realized that it was taking a full-time mental effort to make the part-time job work, and that I would rather put in longer hours at something I loved — my writing — than shorter hours at something I only liked.

So, I’m leaving the office and returning to a 40-hour-week of self-employment. Because, just like Jack Bauer, I’d really like to save my family and the world — and, at least for me, that’s a full-time gig."

From Christine B. Larson's essay "The Anguish of a Part-Timer" in Sunday's New York Times.

Happy Mother's Day from my baby boy

My mom is the best mom in the world! While our family vacationed in Florida, mom and I walked along the beach and collected shells. We like to go on bike rides to Bay Pool. I love when mom tucks me in bed each night and reads me a story. In the summertime, mom and I play tennis at Bradley Park. That's why I love mom so much!

— Michael Hoke, age 8

Maternally Challenged says it best

By now you're probably familiar with all the hullabaloo over Leslie Bennetts' book "The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?" and Rebecca Mead's New Yorker review. If not, I've linked in order to fill you in.

Hat tip to Jill for recommending Tracy Thompson's blog Maternally Challenged. In her post April 16 post, "Now I Get It! We Did It To Ourselves!" Thompson speaks for many, including me.

Check it out!

Friday madness of varying degrees

Been a crazy, hectic week filled with deadlines, travel, parent meetings, practices and the delivery of one new dryer. That's right, the old one finally went to that great laundry junkyard after I learned that while I was gone last week it had run continuously for two days before anyone noticed.

So...as of a few minutes ago, I now have a brand-spanking new dryer that runs quieter than the old one (that can be good or bad) and a light inside to help you find those errant socks. I'll be testing its drying ability shortly since I've got a week's worth of laundry for five overflowing from the laundry room.

Press regularly and wrongly frames mommy madness
I recommend reading E.J. Graff's essay in CJR this month titled "The Opt-Out Myth." I start all such stories holding my breath and ready to rage at one turn of phrase. But then I read this:

The moms-go-home story keeps coming back, in part, because it’s based on some kernels of truth. Women do feel forced to choose between work and family. Women do face a sharp conflict between cultural expectations and economic realities. The workplace is still demonstrably more hostile to mothers than to fathers. Faced with the “choice” of feeling that they’ve failed to be either good mothers or good workers, many women wish they could—or worry that they should—abandon the struggle and stay home with the kids.

The problem is that the moms-go-home storyline presents all those issues as personal rather than public—and does so in misleading ways. The stories’ statistics are selective, their anecdotes about upper-echelon white women are misleading, and their “counterintuitive” narrative line parrots conventional ideas about gender roles. Thus they erase most American families’ real experiences and the resulting social policy needs from view.

He suggests that Joan Williams study, "Opt Out Pushed Out? How the Press Covers Work/Family Conflict," should be recommended reading on every news, business and feature editor's desk. You can download a PDF of the report here.

The reason? "If journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution."

If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that’s a private decision. But it’s a public policy issue if most women (and men) need to work to support their families, and if the economy needs women’s skills to remain competitive. It’s a public policy issue if schools, jobs, and other American institutions are structured in ways that make it frustratingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, for parents to manage both their jobs and family responsibilities.

BINGO!!!!

Jill and I have been singing this tune for several years now, but it bears repeating. The Judith Warners of the world focus their "research" on such a narrow segment of the female population — namely the less than 10 percent of white, highly educated, well-paid professional women. This includes journalists who "increasingly come from and socialize in this class."

And so we read anecdotes from their "personal rearview mirrors" in a number of influential pubs — The Atlantic, Newsweek, Time, etc.

I suppose I also am guilty of the "my-friends-and-me" approach to this subject, but I come from a lesser privileged class. I know plenty of women who stay at home because their husbands have careers that afford them that luxury. I know many more who work in some capacity to make ends meet, some who do so because they want the financial and professional security and others who simply have no choice.

But I know an increasing number of women who used to live a life of privilege, who have gone through painful divorce and who have failed to maintain their professional skills prohibiting them from entering the workplace at a professional level. It's incredibly painful to watch smart, educated women anxious about their skills and ability to do a job that may have evolved exponentially since they were last employed and yet having no choice but to dive into the waters.

Aside from the fact that census numbers do not support such trend stories, the basic fact is that the word "choice" in these circumstances is rarely the reality.

Williams establishes that “choice” is emphasized in eighty-eight of the 119 articles she surveyed. But keep reading. Soon you find that staying home wasn’t these women’s first choice, or even their second. Rather, every other door slammed.

Where does that leave us? With stupid bosses who ask when we reveal we are pregnant whether or not we can still handle working on an investigative series. And it gets worse because it also blocks meaningful public policy.

By offering a steady diet of common myths and ignoring the relevant facts, newspapers have helped maintain the cultural temperature for what Williams calls “the most family-hostile public policy in the Western world.” On a variety of basic policies—including parental leave, family sick leave, early childhood education, national childcare standards, afterschool programs, and health care that’s not tied to a single all-consuming job—the U.S. lags behind almost every developed nation. How far behind? Out of 168 countries surveyed by Jody Heymann, who teaches at both the Harvard School of Public Health and McGill University, the U.S. is one of only five without mandatory paid maternity leave—along with Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.

I'm still waiting for mainstream article that takes a realistic approach to this issue. Or, hell, maybe I just need to write it myself.

Bragg beauties
I had not read Rick Bragg's "All Over but the Shoutin'" until this past weekend. He signed it: "For Wendy, Here at home, Rick Bragg." I am so sorry I hadn't picked it up sooner. He is a beautiful writer and so firmly rooted in his family. This was a book I constantly read aloud to my family, to anyone within earshot, including the dog. Some of my favorite lines and phrases were:

"I had about as much business at Harvard as a hog in a cocktail dress..." on applying for a Nieman Fellowship with less than six months of college education.

"There was a young man Alex Wright, a tall, thin guitar picker from California, cool as the other side of your pillow." Writing for St. Pete Times about the homeless in Miami.

"I don't buy all of it or even most of it, what those preachers said. I don't think you have to do anything to get into heaven except to do right. If you have ever pushed a wheelchair for somebody and nobody paid you, then you might get in. If you ever peeked inside an old person's screen door and cracked open their loneliness with a simple 'hello,' you might get in. My momma will. That, I know. Even with her hands pressed to the dusty top of a dully glowing electric box, she was closer to God than most people will ever get. I take my peace from that." On how his mother was ashamed to go out to church in public, but prayed with Oral Roberts.

"I cannot fix everything that is wrong, flawed or broken in my past, in her past. I cannot recast those years in smooth, cool marble, and believe that my meddling will make things all better again. The name of the child is etched into her head, her heart, her soul." On wanting a new grave that marked the name of his baby brother who died during birth.

"I had grown up in a house in which there were only two books, the King James Bible and the spring seed catalog … He had bought most of them at a yard sale, by the box or pound, and some at a flea market. He did not even know what he was giving me, did not recognize most of the writers. 'Your momma said you still liked to read,' he said." On the gift of two boxes of books his father gave him just before he died.

"One by one, the editors of the New York Times came by to pay my mother homage, to tell her what a fine son she had raised, and how proud they were of me, and for her. Joe Lelyveld just said, 'I know who this is,' and smiled. Gene Roberts came up and talked Southern to her, and others came up to say kind things, welcoming things." With his mother at the Pulitzer luncheon.

"I had seen my mother cry from pain and grief and misery, when I was a child. I had never seen her cry from happiness until they called out my name and I walked up to get that prize, then handed it to her." On receiving his 1996 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.

Where are the sports?
Chuckled at Harry Jaffe's Washingtonian column pondering the absence of Washington Post sports columnists. That Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser are missing is not so surprising. I'm sure it must take gobs of time to come up with the witticisms and criticisms they hurl daily on PTI (that's Pardon the Interruption on ESPN for the uninitiated). Last week Michael, my 8-year-old, complained that they never talk about sports on PTI. I can't stand the volume and hysteria of the show. I much prefer to READ them then listen and watch them.

My March Madness picks
I've got the Georgetown Hoyas winning it all.