Tales from the Shark Tank

Most people learn to say “no” when they’re two or so. I’m a bit older than that, but I’m still learning. Last night a friend who is very good at telling me things I need to hear told me that she was giving me an assignment for the next year: to say “no” when asked to undertake something new unless it’s something I really want to do for my own reasons. Mind, she’s right. I’m desperately overextended. I know that. I know I’ve been running on fumes for quite a while. But being aware of something and having someone else look you in the face and tell you that thing are somehow different.

So now I’m working on it. I told the scientists for whom I’m trying to write a grant proposal that while I can do something slapdash by deadline, it would not be a good quality document. For that we needed to start when I began saying “get me this information. I need these things to put the application together, and I have no idea where to look for them. I can write, but guys, you have to supply the hard science.” They finally started getting it to me a bit over a week ago. I now have a binder full of the information I need, but I couldn’t even read it through by Wednesday, let alone refine and write from it. And wonder of wonders, they agreed. We’re going to keep at it, send it in for preliminary review, and have something really good for the next round of applications in March. Then I called someone who asked me to take over guidance of a small organization upon resignation of the current head (effective May 1, 2005), and told him no. I will advise someone else who has the desire to lead, I told him, since I do have training and credentials she lacks, but I will not take full and sole responsibility. I’ve no desire to do it, and I’m not going to.

And I have called two local community colleges and asked about teaching for them. That’s something I do want to do. I don’t like academic politics, but I do enjoy teaching. I also enjoy being home with my son in the afternoon. It may not be possible, but I’ll try to get both those things. I won’t know if I don’t try. And if I’m doing too many things I don’t want to do, I won’t even be able to try. I do recognize good advice when I get it. And I’m getting a start on taking it.

Anyone who knows me knows that if someone hangs around a lot, I’ll start to notice things. Once I do, I pay attention to things from favorite colors to food allergies. I’m good at forgetting birthdays, but remembering favorite authors. If someone is coming for dinner and I know they hate brocolli or drink only a particular brand of soda, I’ll make sure to take account of that. That, to me, seems to be only basic courtesy. Those are things I will do for people I barely know, let alone people I love.

One of my fledglings, currently living with me, is allergic to cinnamon. It’s not just uncomfortable for her; it is life threatening. This time of year she can’t go into a lot of stores because most of the seasonal scents are cinnamon based and the smell is enough to trigger an asthma attack. She is also allergic to sweet potatoes and a couple of other things. I’ve been “Mama” to her for a couple of years. She’s been staying here since mid-September. So nothing I made for Thanksgiving had cinnamon in it. I used ginger and vanilla powder in the apple crisp, and did not serve sweet potatoes at all. It was very simple.

Yesterday she went to Thanksgiving dinner with what she refers to as her birth family. Evidently it wasn’t that simple for them. Nearly every thing on the table had cinnamon in it, including the turkey. Her mother served sweet potatoes, but no white potatoes. The vegetables were dressed with mustard, which is another of the kid’s allergies. The dishes her father made were equally impossible for her to eat. And her mother thought it was a valid excuse that she only put cinnamon on “half the turkey.” “Surely it isn’t really that bad” was the response, when the child objected. Her folks have been guilt tripping her for not spending time with them, and then pull something like this. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking. I don’t know if they’re trying to drive her away, avenge some imagined slight, kill her or drive her to homicide, or if they’re simply criminally clueless. I do know her response. It was to call here as soon as she escaped, to thank me for “adopting an orphan who happens to have parents”. I was in tears when we got off the phone, and I’m not sure if it’s because I was so much touched by the call, or because I’m so angry at her birth parents. They don’t deserve her. I think it’s just as well I don’t have their phone number, so I can’t tell them directly what I think.

The one thing I did not make the other day was gravy for the turkey. I hate to make it with too much fat, and hadn’t the opportunity to chill and skim the broth. Had we been having Thanksgiving at my in-laws, it would have been a different matter. I have been the family gravy-maker since the first Thanksgiving I spent with them, the year Wick and I started dating. And the way it came about was funny enough that K. suggested I blog it.

My mother-in-law was bustling around finishing the dinner, running late and looking harrassed. Me being me, I walked into the kitchen and asked how I could help. “Make the gravy” she bade me. “Here’s the mix, and the broth is already boiling on the stove.” So I read the directions on the package. I mean, it’s a mix, how tough could it be? But the instructions said to mix the contents of the little envelope with cold water. It was emphasized. Cold was required. No mention was made of boiling broth. I looked at the directions again. Same thing: “cold” in bold print, appended to “water”. Back to the stove. That broth was boiling enthusiastically. It was supposed to provide the base for the gravy. Hmm. A conundrum. Finally I walked over to my mother-in-law and asked “Do you mind if I make it from scratch? I don’t know how to use a mix.” First she stared. Then she burst out laughing. Then she pointed me toward the things I requested - flour, her spice cabinet, apple cider, white wine. It came out very well indeed, so well that I made the gravy every year thereafter until she stopped doing Thanksgiving dinner for the multitudes. And I still haven’t figured out how to use a mix.

Yesterday was busy, to understate the matter wildly. Today my refrigerator is full of more different kinds of food than an army could eat in a week. Of course, there is a small army living in my house now, so I’m quite certain it will get eaten, but still I’m bemused by the sheer plentifulness of things. Dinner ran late, as usual, and my parents ran later, also as usual. What that meant was that the table was never crowded and everyone got fed. My Dad actually came, as well, and that’s no more than a 50/50 chance at the best of times. But Joseph specifically asked for his Pappa, and what my father will do for no one else he will push himself to do for that little boy. I swear my son extended my grandfather’s life at least a couple of years, and is doing the same for my father now, just by being his own sweet loving self. Autistic he may be, but he manages human connection better than a lot of “neurotypical” kids I know.

Part of the plethora of assorted food arises from the desire to please different people. For my dad, it’s not a meal unless it features meat, and he hates turkey. So I made a pot roast. For my husband, it’s not Thanksgiving without turkey and mashed potatoes. I planned to acquire a turkey breast to roast for him and whomever else may want it, but too many other people had the same idea - the grocery was out of them. So I bought a small turkey instead, and made that. I am amused to report that by this morning it’s darn near devoured already. Then, of course, there were the things I like - the greenbeans, salad, anadama bread, fruit and noodle kugel and other assorted stuff that originally grew in the ground. The conversation was good enough that folks who arrived at 1:00 didn’t leave until 6:30. No one went away hungry, either in body or spirit.

And that, above all, is what I’m thankful for. I have friends who come, who want to come and spend time with my family and with each other. I have family to love, both by blood and by choice. And I can gather people for dinner in a way that does feed both body and soul. This house is a haven for a lot of people. I’ve tried to make it so, and days like yesterday tell me that for the most part, I’ve succeeded. And for that, I am very thankful indeed.

Yesterday Wick and I went out to spend my birthday money. We took the house wireless. It’s been less than 24 hours and already I’m wishing we’d done it long ago. No more arguments with Joseph over playing Yahoo! Games, nor requests that Wick quit whatever he’s playing around with to let me do legal work on the computer with the cable modem…or that I get off IM with my friend K. so that he can do something in the way of job searching. No more feeling like my room has been invaded if my housemate needs to check her e-mail, only because the computer is in our bedroom. There’s a desktop in the living room, and now it has the same broadband access. Some people have TVs in assorted rooms and one computer. We have one TV, and three computers.

It’s also wonderful in that now I can be on the computer while Joseph plays downstairs with his trains. He’s gets lonesome by himself, and I get worried and interrupt myself to check on him. Now it’s not an issue. Laptop downstairs? No problem. Little wireless card plugs into USB port, and I can be wherever Joseph wants his mommy to be. Computer gets set to hibernate if I go off to play duckling or kitty, but if he wants to play trains by himself and only wants me as a presence, then I can write. I am, in point of fact, downstairs right now, writing cheerfully. I should be baking for Thanksgiving, since it’s at my house. Instead I’m delighting in the freedom to play from wherever I happen to be. I’ll settle down in time, but for right now I am indulging in my birthday present with great and childish glee.

I just pulled a friendly trick. Having read in her blog that a friend’s cat has cancer, I decided to track her down. That isn’t as easy as it might sound; her primary phone is a cell, and we’ve only spoken by e-mail….lots and lots of e-mail, but still nothing that gives a clue as to possible voice contact except the name of the city in which she lives. But anything worth doing is worth some time, and persistence paid off. Prompted correctly, the internet finally consented to display a phone number connected with her name. It turned out to be the aforementioned cell phone. I believe it is safe to say that she was beyond stunned to get the call from Indiana, from a woman she’s never met in person who none the less dares consider her a friend.

Have I mentioned I love the internet?

My son has done a most thorough job of bean-spillage. To everyone he has seen today he has announced “it’s my mommy’s birthday!” He and his daddy have gone off to the store to get me a gift. I am fully expecting to receive a toy train. He can’t yet conceive that anyone’s beau ideal gift might not be a toy train, which is such a classic small-child-ism that it cracks me up every time I think about it. And you know, he’s so happy about the prospect that it really will be as perfect a gift as he anticipates. He has also planned my cake, telling me that it should have “Thomas and Percy” (the same cake-toppers used for his birthday cake) and five candles”. I’m not at all sure where he came up with that number, but since I’ve no desire to set off a major conflagration with the accurate number of candles, five will do nicely. I’m making a yellow cake with vanilla icing because that’s what my kidlet likes. We mommy types do things like that.

I don’t generally get terribly excited about my own birthdays. They’re markers, a way of keeping score that seems to matter less and less as the accumulation grows. But his excitement is contagious. I expected him to wiggle out of his skin for his own birthday. I didn’t expect him to wiggle out of his skin about mine, and do his small-boy best to make sure I would be excited as he. And it’s impossible not to be, not with him bouncing around me and doing happy-dances and giving me birthday hugs every time he happens to think about it – which is about every five minutes.

So it’s been a good day. I’ve had my little guy’s enthusiasm, the doc says the foot is fully healed and that I can take up recreational walking again, and I had lunch with an attorney who seemed quite sincere about trying to make a place for me in his firm. He also gave me a lot of good advice on working with scientists in general, things which I had begun to figure out but hadn’t quite verbalized yet. It’s going to help in more ways than he knows. And our housemate having agreed to babysit, my husband is taking me out for dinner tonight.

One of the cards I got today asked if I was up for trying for another 45 years of being best of friends. I think she’s setting her sights too low. I’m not after another 45 years. I’m after another 100 at least. Tally ho!

I’d forgotten what it was like to not know how to use a computer. I’d forgotten my first attempts at mousing, learning to time the double-click, recognizing what link I should be clicking on, and so on. I just got a quick re-introduction.

My mom stopped by. They aren’t internet-linked at the moment, so when she wanted to investigate information on an art supply company’s website, she asked me to pull it up. I did so. And then I had to come back every few seconds to show her something. How to move down the screen and back up again. How to tilt the screen for better readability. How to work the mouse, in detail. The fact that if the laptop is online, she can’t just pick up the phone and call my dad. All the things I take for granted as part of life, in essence, I had to explain.

I don’t have a problem with that, though Mom did say I was getting up and coming over a lot. She seems to have missed the connection between her asking me a question and me getting up to demonstrate the answer. She asked if she was making me nervous. No, not really, although I had been working when she knocked unannounced. (Not much time lost; she showed up about 15 minutes before the boychick bearing bus was due to deposit him at the driveway.) But I will admit I got a little focused – which Mom doesn’t often see, and interprets as nervousness – trying to anticipate what she was going to need next, to keep the frustration level down.

My folks are supposed to be getting a computer with internet capabilities as soon as the client who got me Nimue has time to pick it up. I think I better set aside a couple of days to give lessons in computer and internet 101. But you know? I’m think more than anything I’m grateful that Mom wants to learn the new stuff. I’ve said for years that when I stop being interested in learning new things, it will be time to start shoveling. I got that from my Mom.

Just before school started, my mother-in-law bought clothes for Joseph. They were entirely too big, and when we tried to put them on him, he threw a fit. He also has a long memory. So today when I offered him a choice between the tan pants and the blue ones, he said no to both. “They’re too big, Mommy. I hate them.” I encouraged him to just try them. Lo and behold, as I had expected, they now fit perfectly.

“Mommy? Did my pants get smaller?”

“No, sweetheart. You got bigger.”

“You mean I’m growing?” in tones of great astonishment.

I thought that was supposed to be my line.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Dorothea has said recently about what is really involved in being a good citizen – of this country, of this planet, of the Human Race. I was going to e-mail her, but as I thought it through it seemed to me that it deserves its own entry in my blog.

I was raised that it was impolite to disagree with people. It is impossible to be involved in politics without at least discussion, which might lead to disagreement. It is a variant on Dorothea’s parents’ “go along to get along”. Not that my folks were apolitical; not by a long shot. I remember canvassing for Kennedy with my dad. I would have been just short of four at the time. But it was an abstraction generally, and as soon as any hint of alternative opinion or action raised its head, the subject was dropped. Like Dorothea, there was money for trees in Israel, and a Tzedakah (charity) box at the holidays, especially Passover. Jewish publications came into the house and were discussed. Need was discussed. The Civil Rights movement was decried because “they’re destroying everything instead of trying to fix things peacefully” even as they acknowledged that nothing else seemed likely to get the attention of those in power. But no actual constructive action beyond discussion in the house ever took place that I knew of.

On election day last week one of my fledglings went to vote where she thought she was registered. It took a while for the election officials to figure out where to send her, and what with one thing and another a twenty minute errand took two and a half hours. She’s 21; this is the first presidential election in which she has been eligible to vote. And you know what? She stuck it out. She went where she was told, and talked to person after person until she got to vote. She came here after to tell me about it. Now she wants to stay get involved with some issue; she’s figuring out what will engage her. She didn’t get that in her family, I know. And I know she’s seen it here.

It is in the Talmud that whomever saves a single person, it is as if he has saved the world. That, to me, is the essence of citizenship. I can’t save the whole country single-handedly. I don’t know that I can ever actually save a life (how many of us can?), but I can help one person at a time. I can give one person at a time a safe haven. I can show one child at a time that asking “why” is not only acceptable, but obligatory. Stereotypical it may be, but I can give one person at a time chicken soup and a friendly ear so that they don’t feel themselves isolated from the community. It seems to me that apathy is born of isolation. Break the isolation and perhaps the apathy can be broken too. Teach one, and let each such a one teach one. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m paying attention. I’m talking. I’m encouraging. I’m giving my time. I’m not shutting up at the first hint of disagreement. I’m taking positions and writing letters and making sure my son and god-daughter see me do it. If not me, then who? And if not now, when?