Brushes With Greatness

(Inspired by a post from a chat forum I regularly visit)

The poster wrote:

"I reckon it would be nice if there was a "Brushes With Greatness" archive that compiled all these bits together."

"Brushes With Greatness," hmmm.... Yes, this could be a fun and interesting topic.

My brushes with greatness include the time my 5th grade class went on a field trip to see Marcel Marceau perform his pretty amazing mime act in a dinner theater, and then had the honor of a private audience with him for quite awhile after the show, because he and my teacher had somehow struck up a friendship. Mrs. Stamberg was the kind of teacher who took art classes at night, then came back to the classroom the next day and taught us every thing she'd learned about drawing or painting. She was one of those teachers who literally changes the way you think, has a direct hand in shaping you and your interests.

And there was the time I met...ah, you've already heard enough about me meeting the four blokes in Led Zeppelin in a previous post. So I won't go into that one again now.

But my most intense, sustained brush with greatness was the time I sat opposite the white-haired man in the red-and-white checked shirt and the bright red socks as he let his tape recorder run. If you haven't figured out the answer to my "riddle" yet, I'm talkin' about Mr. Studs Terkel.

One day my phone rang, and there was the slightly nasal voice of an old man on the other end. Said he'd seen my op-ed piece in The Chicago Tribune, and had gotten my number from the editor. Said it was Studs Terkel. Me being pretty young and unexposed to Studs at the time, I'd never heard him speak before. So I didn't yet recognize that voice that's so highly recognizable once you've heard it. At first I thought one of my friends was putting me on. More than once I expressed my doubt about the veracity of his claim to be Studs Terkel, almost to the point that he was beginning to get a little irritated with me. :)

Well, he somehow finally convinced me that he was indeed the real McTerkel. And then the poor man had to endure me gushing profusely about what an honor it was to have him call me, about how I couldn't believe it was really him. Then (a bit apologetically), about how I'd read "Working" and loved it, and really meant to read the rest of his books, especially "Hard Times" and "The Good War."

Long story short, he eventually asked me if I'd drop by his office at the public radio station where his program was broadcast, and be one of the interview subjects for his next book. So I headed downtown to the WBEZ offices, where Studs and I chatted for more than an hour while his signature tape recorder captured every word.

And that was the problem. I tried to give him thoughtful, pithy answers to his questions about what the neighborhood I grew up in was like, stuff like that. But I was only in my 20s at the time, still kind of naive and a bit of a crusader. And it probably didn't help that I was feeling kind of down on my old neighborhood and former cohorts at the time, as I'd recently made an abrupt and unexpected return to life in the suburbs after five years at university. So I came off sounding a bit, hmmm...not much like myself at all.

I think it was a combination of me being a little bit shy and nervous under the circumstances and Studs sort of leading the interview a certain way to get the information he needed from me, then just taking little bits of our conversation--sometimes out of context--to use in his book.

But for whatever reasons, in the finished product I come across as a sort of cigarette-smoking, gum-chewing, street-corner or barroom philosopher, a little on the self-righteous side. To keep with that total blue-collar vibe to my character, he never even mentions the (Vietnam-related) opinion piece I wrote that had inspired him to look me up in the first place. So yeah, I'm one of the subjects in one of Studs' books. But I ain't gonna tell ya which one or under what pseudonym. ;)

Some Things Are Just Meant To Be

My oldest son, Daniel, was born with Down syndrome. Because I've never wanted to define him--nor have others define him--purely by his disability, I always try to view him more as a young man who happens to have Down syndrome than "My Down Syndrome Child." He is above all else a human being, deserving of the same dignity and respect as any other human being. That's why I like to stress the things he has in common with other human beings, rather than focus on his differences too much.

Acknowledge them I freely do. I know, for instance, that he'll probably never marry and have children, never drive a car, never earn a Ph.D., learn to play an instrument, become a star athlete. But I also believe that focusing too much on his physical, emotional, intellectual and behavioral differences would only serve to limit him in life, and limit how others perceive him.

So until now I've avoided writing posts that focus on his disability. I don't intend for my blog to become Down Syndrome Central or anything. But because, as I said in my previous post, October is National Down Syndrome Awareness month, I hope you won't mind if I indulge myself in one more Down's-related post before the month is out.

I have a few thoughts to express today about how, in retrospect, it almost seems as if Daniel was destined to come into the lives of my husband and me.

There's the issue of genetics, of course. I had a great uncle who had Down syndrome. Lived to the ripe old age of 69, he did, which is quite old for someone with this disability. I attribute his longevity to the fact that, in an era when so many handicapped infants were whisked out of the arms of their heartbroken mothers and fathers to be hidden away in institutions, my great grandma and grandpa--a hearty Minnesota Swede and German, respectively--kept their boy at home, where he was raised alongside his three "normal" siblings, and where he remained until both of his parents had died. Only then did his siblings look for, and find, a wonderful group home for him, where he had a job, friends, and a thriving social life, and where he was eager to return after his weekend visits with family. (Which is always a good sign. It's when they DON'T want to go back that you should worry.)

So was it simply a question of genetics that brought Daniel to us? Surprisingly, it wasn't. When the doctors did all the blood tests, they discovered that neither my husband nor I was a carrier of the gene that causes the extra chromosome associated with Down Syndrome. So it was purely an "accident." And because we were quite young when we had him (early 20s), it was against pretty high odds (about 1 in 1000) that he was born with the disability. Everyone knows that the odds of having a baby with Down syndrome increase greatly with the mother's age, so that by the time a woman is in her 40s, the risk is very real, and goes up higher with each year. But to be 23 and have your first child born with Down's...well, let's just say it takes you completely off guard.

So what makes me feel that I was destined to have a baby with Down syndrome? Call it intuition if you like. First there was the fact of growing up with Uncle Tommy around. Everytime dad would put mom and all of us kids (there were *ONLY* five of us at the time in our still-growing family) onto a train in Chicago's Union Station and we'd head up to Minneapolis to visit her relatives--there Uncle Tommy would be, just he and great-grandma left in the old white clapboard house he'd lived in since his birth around 1930.

As we kids and our Minnesota cousins ran wild around great-grandma's cozy old house, Uncle Tommy would be sitting there in his big worn armchair like a king on his throne in the tiny living room, watching his favorite shows on TV. Every time we got too loud for him or blocked his view of the TV, he'd get all flustered and forcefully say "SHHH!" to us, putting a finger to his lips for emphasis. But other times he seemed to enjoy having all of us little kids bustling about and disrupting his normally calm, quiet house. A smile would crinkle his sweet slanted eyes as he'd

watch us play. Sometimes he'd even try to talk with us a little.

Ever since those days, I always felt somehow drawn to people with Down syndrome. Whenever I'd be out with my parents at the zoo, a museum, restaurant, etc. and spot a person with Down's, I'd just kind of watch them for awhile. I wouldn't stare rudely at them or be impolite in any way about it. I just felt compelled to acknowledge them, just because I cared, and felt a strong affection for them. Long before my Down syndrome baby was born, I often had to resist the overwhelming urge I sometimes felt to wrap my arms around people with Down's and give 'em a great big hug.

To be completely honest, in those early years I was also slightly afraid of and even slightly repelled by my uncle, with his thick tongue that was always pushing out of his mouth as if there just wasn't enough room for all of it in there (which of course I later found out is exactly why many people with Down's have the very same problem). And I was scared a bit by his droning, slurred speech and the moaning noises he'd make when he just couldn't find the words in his limited vocabulary to express what he was feeling, and so had to lash out somehow in frustration.

Yet at the same time, I was also mystified, fascinated, empathetic and curious about him. Though he was a grown man in his 30s at the time, he seemed so childlike and vulnerable with his lumbering, shuffling gait, his stubby fingers, his thick neck, his wire-rim glasses and that protruding tongue, so I felt almost protective of him, even when I was just 6 or 7 myself. I guess I just sensed that he was still a lot like a kid himself. He had a thing for Superman, liked to wear a towel pinned around his neck with a safety pin as a cape. And he loved cap guns. So how could a 7-year-old not relate to him, right?

So this background of growing up with Down syndrome as a normal part of my family life sort of groomed me for what was to come in my own life, though of course I had no idea then what the future held for me.

Then there was that textbook in my Intro. to Psychology course in college. I remember very clearly being drawn to pictures of people with Down syndrome in the chapter on "abnormal psychology." As I pulled an all-nighter to prepare for a test, I can still remember staring at those photos, quite mesmerized by the sweetness and innocence of those faces, feeling a surge of compassion, love almost, toward them...that protective feeling again.

And perhaps most strangely and presciently of all, there was the time in the hospital, just days before Daniel was born. My doctor had admitted me two weeks before my due date, after we realized I was quite small for my dates. After he'd studied the results of an ultrasound, he sat us down in his office. I clearly remember him sitting across from my husband and me at his desk, giving us the diagnosis: Intrauterine Growth Retardation. He must've noticed the involuntary reflex of fear in our eyes as soon as he uttered the word "retardation." Because he quickly added, "And I stress, this just means PHYSICAL retardation. The baby's PHYSICAL size isn't measuring up." (I guess he really didn't know about the Down's at this point, or I don't think he would've said that. At least, I hope he didn't know yet, and that he wasn't just withholding that information from us to postpone our grief.)

As I lay there in my hospital bed that weekend, missing my own baby shower, waiting for labor to be induced the following Monday, I picked up my copy of LaLeche League's guide to breastfeeding and started flipping through it. Though I'd exhaustively researched this topic over the past nine months, I figured it couldn't hurt to review. After all, I'd be needing this knowledge a little sooner than I'd expected.

And there in that book was a photo of the sweetest, most beautiful baby. My eyes kept being drawn back to it, almost involuntarily. Yes, you guessed it: The baby had Down syndrome. And he was a boy, in an adorable little baseball cap, I remember. He had the sweetest grin on his little face. I couldn't stop gazing at that photo, my heart swelling with love and tenderness for this pure, innocent little guy who'd drawn a short straw in life, who was starting out life with a huge strike against him. But he didn't seem to know that, or to mind. With that sweet smile on his face, he just looked so happy to be alive. He was in the chapter on nursing a child with special needs.

I finally forced myself to turn the page after awhile, truly thinking I'd never need such information. I still had that confidence that most first-time parents have that their baby will be absolutely "perfect."

And then, two days later, our Daniel was born...with Down syndrome. It was a devastating shock and a raw wound for quite awhile. But in some ways I'd been preparing my whole life for his birth. Strange how life works sometimes, isn't it? And he DID turn out to be quite "perfect" in his own way, after we, his parents, were able to do some adjusting, some rearranging of our initial dream. We just needed to learn to live with a new, slightly revised definition of the word "perfect."

Down Right Beautiful

(This post is dedicated to all the beautiful, remarkable people in the world who have Down syndrome, as well as to the families and friends who love them.)

October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month. With me being the very sporadic and infrequent blogger that I've been so far, it probably doesn't surprise anyone that it's taken me until the month is nearly over to write a post reminding people about it. But as one who is too-often running late and is an expert at procrastinating, I've come to learn that in most things, the old saying "better late than never" really DOES apply.

In that spirit, I present the following two-part documentary, which I discovered much to my joy on YouTube. It's about the very special Core Family, two loving parents and four big sisters who weren't about to let a little Down syndrome get in the way of loving and caring for their son/brother.

It's a beautifully filmed little piece of work (with kudos to Papa Core, who captured his children's 1960s childhoods so beautifully and poetically on his no-doubt quite primitive video equipment. The moving footage, combined with his eloquent, poignant commentary, brought tears to my eyes more than once while viewing this. The credit goes to filmmaker Roger M. Richards for the evocative synchronization of Core's audio commentary with his video images. Richards--Core's grandson, and the son of one of the sisters featured in the film--found his grandfather's audiotapes and home movies among boxes of tangled film spools he inherited upon his death, and edited them together to create this incredibly moving documentary.)

I think this "small" film says just about everything there is to say about the sacred bonds of family, and the incredible, abiding, unconditional love of four sisters for their baby brother. And--perhaps most important of all in these times when the prevalence of amniocentesis is leading to an alarming increase in the rate of abortions of fetuses revealed to have Down syndrome--it shows us the sweetness, purity and beauty (maybe not apparent to some on the surface, but there all the same) of people with Down syndrome. I think it shows quite clearly just what the world would lose if people like Dwight Core Jr. (and my son Daniel) ever became an extinct "species."

Think of Me First As A Person--Pt. 1

Think of Me First As A Person--Pt. 2

Loonacy

My husband and I caught the last half of On Golden Pond when it was on TV recently. It's a problematic movie, very uneven in tone, switching as it does from deeply moving scenes that ring so true to some downright melodramatic, even unintentionally silly scenes. Even the title is all wrong. I know we're dealing with acting royalty here, but excuse me Mr. Fonda and Ms. Hepburn, that's no mere "pond" you're on, that's a full-fledged lake. And a huge mother of a lake at that!

But there's one thing this movie gets absolutely right: the loons! And Norman and Ethel's reverential love for them--that's absolutely true to life too.

When they arrive at the beginning of the summer to open up their cottage, and their ears perk up and they get those blissed-out looks on their faces at the sound of the first loon call of the season, well...that isn't sappy melodrama, that's reality! In fact, it's exactly how my husband and I react whenever we hear them calling. Call us loony if you will, but we stop whatever else we're doing, and just listen intently. If the kids are talking, we hush them and demand that they listen too, until the last strains die down and we know this particular loon moment has passed.

And calling it a "loon moment" isn't hyperbole either. When you're fortunate enough to be staying at a lake that's got a resident loon family floating and diving around in its waters, you feel as if you've been blessed, that nature has given you a rare gift. You fully appreciate that you're being graced by their presence.

And this is not just because they're fairly rare birds, who live within a very limited range in North America. It's also because they're such special birds. They look, sound and act like no other birds around.

Once you've heard the lonely, hauntingly beautiful wail of a loon late in the night on a Northwoods lake, or its crazy tremolo warbling as it flies across the sky at sunset, you never forget it. If you've never been lucky enough to hear one, this is what it sounds like:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/audio/Common_Loon.html

Loons have held an almost mystical attraction for me since I heard my first mournful but beautiful loon call as a child, while whiling away some idyllic summer days at relatives' cottages on Minnesota lakes. This was the "old days" of the '60s to early '70s, before cottages became "summer homes."

So I'm not talking about those palatial, fancy log homes with their second-floor lofts, prow fronts and huge banks of windows. No, these were honest-to-goodness, rickety old spider-web shrouded cottages. The kind with screen doors that squeaked when you opened them, and banged shut with a nice, satisfying slap when kids ran eagerly out the door after breakfast or dinner to explore in the woods, or fish from an old wooden pier, or skip stones on the lakeshore (looking for the perfect, nice flat rock in the crystal clear, shallow water along the shore was half the fun), or go for a swim out to the diving raft that was often anchored offshore. (Sometimes we made it home from our wanderings in the woods for lunch too; other times not.)

Now those were some happy, magical times, some of my best childhood memories. And the compelling call of the loon was the perfect soundtrack to accompany them.

It wasn't until I'd heard them for years, felt their unseen presence on many a Northwoods vacation, that I had my first actual sighting of one (or at least, the first one I remember). Finally it was my turn to wake before dawn and join my dad for an all-morning walleye-hunting expedition on his boat. We kids had to take turns, because there were 7 of us. Way too many to fit safely on his little rented motor boat at one time.

As we coasted along in the chill gray of dawn, a loon appeared ghostlike out of the thick mist that floated over the lake's surface. My dad pointed it out to me as we drifted silently by, not wanting to scare him.

To my untrained eye, it looked like a duck. But once you're familiar with those iridescent black/dark green heads, thick necks, long pointy beaks and red eyes that somehow don't look ugly or creepy (as you might think red eyes on anything would), and those black and white checkerboard feathers, you can never mistake a loon for anything else. They're magnificent birds!

And their calls...I can't quite express in words the primal hold they have on me. They're one of earth's oldest bird species, which might at least partially explain why their tremelos, hoots, and especially their signature wails, reach an ancient place deep within my heart and soul.

Heaven to me is two loons calling to each other on a full-moon summer night, their haunting cries echoing across a quiet lake aflame with silver ripples in the remote and wild Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Yes, I know Yoko Ono would have a field day with this one, but I'm talking loons in June under a full moon. But somehow I think Paul McCartney--who Ms. Ono famously scoffed at for such simplistic rhyme schemes and his sometimes saccharine expressions of emotion--might understand the overpowering emotions that can get stirred up by the haunting call of the loon.

Suspended In Mid Air

This is one of my favorite photos of my youngest son, for several reasons. I love the way it captures a carefree summer afternoon in our leafy backyard. Then there's the goofy pose my little guy is in, all lanky limbs akimbo. And there's something about the way the camera captures him suspended in midair, just before he takes his plunge into the cool, refreshing, aquamarine water.

The shot was taken more than two years ago. We were having fun experimenting with the "sport" setting on our new digital camera. My son was eight here, right near the end of that time when I could still safely get away with calling him "my little guy."

And just this past summer, I somehow got away with using this photo on the front of an invitation I made for a pool party he had for his friends.

Knowing how much he likes to avoid appearing "babyish" at any cost, I was actually pretty surprised I got away with it. He did protest when he first saw it, but only slightly. I convinced him that his friends would think it was pretty neat, that they wouldn't find it babyish at all.

But I also have a 15-year-old son. So I know full well that this is probably one of the last times I'll get away with something like that with my 10-year-old. I know that any day now, he could transform.

He's already showing signs of it.

One night after I'd pulled the covers up over him and bent down to give him a kiss on the cheek, all of a sudden he laid this one on me: he said he didn't need me to tuck him in anymore. He even pulled out the dreaded, "None of my friends' moms tuck them in anymore." It felt like a punch to the gut hearing my youngest say that, knowing that--after 23 years of raising kids--my days of "tucking in" are numbered. But I quietly absorbed the blow and jokingly persisted, because I could sense that he wasn't really quite ready to let go of our lifelong tradition. Just testing the waters.

My hunch was fortunately correct. As of this writing, I'm still allowed to tuck him in and get my goodnight kiss. But I know it won't be long now before he decides he really means it.

It happened this way with his older brother. This is the age when I first began noticing the little signs that he was preparing to "break away."

You spend years hoping they'll learn to pick up their Legos and put them away. Then when they finally do it, it's for good. And then you long for the days when there were piles and bins of them everywhere. You wish you were still stepping on them in every room of the house, that the vacuum was still sucking them up with that loud, telltale rattling sound.

And the bookshelves tell the story of their growing up too. The hardcover Dr. Seuss books that you spent hours reading together when your sons were toddlers and young boys give way to hardcover Harry Potters. The multitudes of thin Clifford, Franklin, and Berenstain Bears paperbacks--books you were always happy to read with them because they were just the perfect length for a quick pre-nap read--get replaced by longer chapter books about Lego Bionicle characters, or Pokemon or Sponge Bob. Then it's on to Goosebumps, then Artemis Fowl, and before you know it, he's graduated to those Japanese manga paperbacks. At first you protest that there's too much violence in those stories, that they're "graphic" in more ways than one. And then before you know it, your "little boy" is at the point where you think he might be mature enough to handle certain morally centered R-rated movies if he watches them "accompanied by a parent."

(All too soon, my boys will be sailing off on their own adventures.)

We read the first five Harry Potter novels together, spending literally years-worth of memorable evenings tucked in on the couch together, me reading aloud to him chapter by chapter. Then finally the time came when he told me he'd like to make the journey to Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts by himself. And that's when I knew our nights of bedtime stories were officially over. Now he sits at the kitchen counter before bed most nights, munching on multiple bowls of cereal while reading Ray Bradbury or Stephen King stories to himself.

You can mark the passages of their young lives by their sleeping arrangements too. In those early months of their infancy, all of my boys slept nestled in right beside me, as safe and warm and protected as they could possibly be. Then when they'd lost a bit of that newborn fragility, when they'd grown bigger and stronger and could sleep through the night, we found ourselves moving them to their crib in our bedroom. It was just a few feet away, but it felt like a big separation nonetheless.

Finally when they got to be toddlers of two or so, it was time for them to make the move out of their crib and our room into a room of their own. Here they had their own real bed for the first time. But they were still reassuringly close by, right across the hall, where I could check on their breathing if they had colds, or pop in easily to make sure they were all covered up and cozy before I retired for the night.

And now that 15-year-old has recently moved out of the room he shared with his younger brother for the past eight years. He's made his biggest separation yet from the family proper. He's taken over the space downstairs that used to be our family office/computer room. So now he's got that quintessential teenager's "room in the basement," as far away from the rest of us as he can be without actually moving away.

He would've been scared to death to sleep all alone in the basement until a few years ago. But now...he loves it! He and his friend have spent many hours painting the walls, arranging furniture, assembling the new nightstand we bought him, digging up little objects d'art that we'd packed away in boxes, setting them up on his shelf and dresser. And he's wanted very little help from us in this undertaking. He's made it quite clear that he can do it on his own.

And in many ways, I'm loving it too, this surge toward adulthood and independence. It's a beautiful thing watching a small boy transform into a big boy, then into a pre-teen, and finally into a full-fledged teenager, a young man.

But I'm going to enjoy every minute I can with my last "little guy" before he grows up on me too.

The Ones That Almost Got Away

(Definitely not one of MY photos!)

Thanks to Peter in Australia for inspiring me to write a bit tonight. As I was replying to his comment (which I've copied below) about my previous post, I suddenly realized that my "reply" had turned into a full-fledged post itself. So I thought, ah, why not? I'm due for one anyway. So here goes....

****************************************

Peter wrote:

I can't do without my computer and scanner. A new digital camera is also coming my way.

They all help with blogging and sharing moments in time to anyone.

I just have to work out what I am going to do with the dozens of undeveloped 35 mm film rolls, God only knows how old they are, that are sitting in my cupboard draws.

Lost moments in time!

Anyway, thanks for listening. Must run!

Time for me to mow the lawn, clean the pool and fill in the holes that the dog has dug.

Regards
Peter McCartney
Sydney Australia.

******************************************

Exactly Peter! There you go. You've just reaffirmed the idea I was trying to express in my post, that there are pros and cons to both digital and film photography. Yes, photos are usually pretty easy to find when they're stashed in a drawer. But apparently sometimes rolls of film aren't. :)

As I said before, I love the stunning clarity of digital photos, and the amazing things you can do with them. But I don't like empty photo albums just sitting there collecting dust, waiting to be filled with photos I never seem to get around to printing. So that's the "dilemma" of my title.

And to answer your question about what to do with all those old rolls of film: ditch 'em right into the trash I say! I don't mean to sound bossy...just a warning from my own painful experience.

I still remember the time back in 1977, when I told my mom that I, my sister, and a few of our friends were going to take the bus and the L into downtown Chicago, where we were going to meet Led Zeppelin, so could I please have some film for my camera. She rummaged through the kitchen junk drawer and absentmindedly handed me a roll, probably thinking all the while, "Yeah sure she's going to meet Led Zeppelin."

Well, you might be able to guess what happened next. We DID actually meet them--all four!--outside the Ambassador East Hotel, where they were staying during the Midwest leg of their tour. They chatted with us for awhile, signed our album covers, and smiled obligingly for our cameras. And then when the film got developed, I saw that my otherwise great, close-up shots of Jimmy, Robert, and the two Johns were way-too-dark and way-too-purple/bluish. So much so that everytime I showed someone the photos, I felt the need to apologize profusely for their awful quality as I watched them squint to identify the four lads.

I remember my mom looking a bit worried when I got home and told her we'd actually met the band, and that I'd taken photos. "I hope they turn out; that film was pretty old." Boy, she wasn't kidding! Turned out it was years past its expiration date!

So I repeat, throw away that old film now! I know that can be a hard thing to do. With the price of film being what it used to be, it's almost like throwing money away. But I still wince when I think of the price I paid for my mother's thriftiness (or maybe it was just a lack of time for jobs like clearing out junk drawers, as she was raising 7 kids back then.) I could've sold those photos on eBay for perhaps thousands of dollars by now.

Not that I ever would really dream of it, mind you. Even shrouded in their "deep purple haze," those shots of a very cool-looking Jimmy Page in shades, with a rock-star scarf thrown jauntily over one shoulder, and John Paul Jones sitting calmly in the back seat of a limo on Chicago's Gold Coast, are still priceless to this former Led Zeppelin freak.

P.S. Your itinerary of domestic duties sounds like a typical weekend around MY house too. You lucky Aussies...here you are just beginning your spring, and it's already warm enough to use your pool! And here we are just about to put ours under wraps again for the next 7-8 months, until next summer rolls around.

The Digital Dilemma

Since we got our first digital camera over two years ago, we've been amazed at the clarity and brilliance of the photos, especially when it comes to shooting nature/outdoor scenes. These cameras capture the lighting so accurately, the crispness of every detail, that you almost feel like you're right in the scene that was photographed.

What's that? You say you'd love to see some of them? Okay, that can be arranged. If you've got some time. And I DO mean a lot of time. Because you'll have to come down to my basement and pull up a chair in front of the computer and wait while I find the folder they're in, click on it to open it, view the thumbnails, and finally, get a slide show going for you. How come you keep looking at your watch? You say you've been sitting here with me for more than five minutes, and you still haven't seen a single photo?

Does that scenario sound familiar to you?

Ah, whatever happened to the days when you'd have actual hard copies of your photos to put in an actual, not virtual, photo album? When someone would ask to see your photos, you could easily and quickly oblige. All you'd have to do is pull out an envelope or a photo album. The only obstacle might be trying to remember which drawer you'd stashed them away in. But now that I've switched to a digital camera, I always seem to be saying, "Well, I haven't made prints of any of them yet."

I was quite the holdout when it came to getting a digital camera. When friends would expound on the virtues of "going digital," I'd counter with arguments about how I like having actual hard copies of my photos. Well, you can just print out the ones you like anytime, they'd suggest. And you can just delete the bad ones. And look at all the cool things you can do with them. You can send photos of the kids to their grandparents right there in an e-mail. You can make your own cards with them, put them on calendars or coffee mugs or mousepads. You can crop them, enhance them, brighten them, turn them into cartoons, turn them upside down. (Now why am I hearing Tom Waits voice in my head rasping, "It dices! It slices!")

Yeah, they were right about all that. And another one they didn't mention: you can insert your photos into your blog, like this:


Morning's light in the Ottawa National Forest, Michigan

And this:


Loon on a lake in the Ottawa National Forest, Michigan

And this:


Sunrise north of Madison, Wisconsin

Yeah, you sure can do all kinds of fun, really artistic stuff with your digital photos...once you've uploaded them to your computer, that is. That's another one of those little steps you have to take before you can even look at them.

But what I really want is just an actual photo on nice glossy stock, one I can hold in my hand or put in an album.

My closest friend and I had a long-standing ritual until I went digital. We both have our own busy lives, and we don't exactly live down the block from one another. But we still manage to get together every couple of months or so. And when we do, one of the questions we always ask each other is: "Do have any new pictures?" And then we invariably pull out the envelopes and catch up on the photo chronicles of many of the events that have taken place in the interim since our last visit. "Here we are at the museum. And this was on M's birthday." etc., etc. I call it a ritual because it really has become a sacred part of our 30-year-friendship over the years, especially since we both started having kids. Besides my mother, my dear friend is just about the only person who actually wants to look at my family photos. So much so that she doesn't just wait until I thrust them in her face; she asks to see them!

But recently I've sadly realized that whenever that part of our visit rolls around now, I just don't have the photos to show her any more. As we sit at my kitchen counter sipping our coffee, I apologetically tell her that I still haven't loaded them onto the computer. Or that they're in there, but I still haven't had any of them printed out. I promise her I'll have some new ones to show her next time I see her. And now that she's gone digital too, I've noticed she's begun making the same apologies to me. So please allow me a moment of silence as this sad thought sinks into my consciousness for the first time: our sacred little photo-sharing ritual seems to be fading away...

...while the virtual folders--labeled neatly by date--pile up in my "My Pictures" file. I just never seem to find the large chunk of time needed to bring them all up on the screen, peruse the thousands of digital photos I've taken, and then spend another eternity waiting for the ones I've selected to upload to a photo site, then place my order. So I just don't.

I can remember spending so many happy hours sitting on the couch with one or both of my older sons beside me, a photo album open on our laps, reliving vacations, birthday parties, and other happy memories while poring over the photos in those albums. It was always a wonderful way to spend time with them in front of a fire on a winter afternoon. But the other day I realized with a stab of guilt that my youngest has rarely spent time with me this way. Once you have your third child, you tend to fall behind on these kinds of things anyway. He was born in 1997; I kept up a valiant effort at keeping the photo albums up to date until around the year 2000. And now that we've gone digital, the backlog is that much worse. So he rarely gets the chance to look at family photos, to revisit his past, to see what he looked like as a baby or sweet little toddler. Rarely have I sat on the couch perusing photo albums with him.

It's kind of sad to think that whenever my family and I want to catch up on the photographic record of our life right now, we have to sit down in front of a computer screen together to do it.

Another example of a technological innovation that was supposed to make life easier and better and save us time really making it more complicated and robbing us of time. And taking something sacred away.

My Swingin' Neighbors

No, this isn't what you think. I don't mean THAT kind of swinging. I mean the musical kind of swinging, as in gypsy swing jazz music. No, make that as in exquisite, exuberant, expertly wrought, totally killer gypsy swing music...not to mention a little bluegrass, country, Parisian cabaret, and even a few tenderly rendered Beatles tunes like "Here, There and Everywhere" thrown in for good measure.

What I'm talkin' about is a band of highly accomplished, highly likeable musicians and singers who go by the name of Harmonious Wail. (And isn't that a great name?) And yes, as the title of this post suggests, two of them happen to be my neighbors. (At least, when we're all camping in our little patches of woods in the beautiful U.P., a.k.a. Michigan's Upper Peninsula.)

That would be Sims Delaney-Potthoff, the group's leader and mandolinist extraordinaire, and his lovely wife Maggie Delaney-Potthoff, whose beautiful, versatile voice is The Wail's "secret ingredient," that extra something they've got that makes them stand out from the ranks of other excellent gypsy swing bands who are mainly instrumental. And in the best tradition of "old-timey," back-porch musicians, Maggie also plays a mean cardboard box. She wields her brushes to paint a unique percussive backdrop for the mandolin, acoustic guitar and stand-up bass that her fellow band members play. And man, can these guys play!

If you're a fan of any of the following musicians--Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, Jethro Burns, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Bireli Lagrene, Duane Allman, David Grisman, and Louis Armstrong, Ray Brown, Dave Holland, Oscar Pettiford and Edgar Meyer--who The Wail cite as their main musical influences, then I'd recommend you go to their MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/harmoniouswail ASAP and give them a listen. Or you can visit their official website here: http://www.wail.com/index.htm to learn more about them.

The band makes their home base in Madison, Wisconsin. They've earned a dedicated following through their 4 CDs and frequent touring around the Midwest and all over the U.S., not to mention many gigs at music festivals in Europe.

Besides Sims and Maggie, there's Tom Waselchuk on guitar and vocals, and John Christensen on stand-up bass. All of these guys (and gal) are world-class musicians and/or singers. Sims trained in Chicago under the legendary Jethro Burns.

But words can only go so far to describe the sound of music. To fully appreciate their talent and the bouncy, swingin' joy their music brings, you really have to hear it.

We didn't realize we had such musical neighbors until one evening my husband and I were sitting on the eastern shore of the lake right beside the boat dock, having one of those Corona moments.

Literally.

We were, in fact, sipping our Coronas with a twist of lime while watching the sunset over the lake. Suddenly a small motorboat came idling toward us from across the lake. Two pleasant-looking fishermen docked their boat, got out and said hello. We had a nice chat, during which we compared notes and realized we're right down the road from each other, at least when we're staying up in the beautiful U.P.

And then the more talkative one with the shock of slightly wild gray hair and wire-rim specs handed us his card and said, "I'll leave you alone with your sunset now. I know that for some of us, it's like church."

Ah, a true fellow nature worshipper. That's when I knew I really liked this guy. Even though he looked in many ways like your typical Northwoods weekend fisherman--complete with flannel shirt, baseball cap, tackle box, etc.--there had been something about his gracefully aging hippie look, his calm, cool bearing, the goatee and the slightly hepcat way he talked that had made me sense he might just be a musician. Even his name, Sims, sounded artistically unique.

After they'd hooked their boat up to their trailer and drove away, I happened to glance at the card he'd given me. When I saw that it said "Harmonious Wail.com," I didn't know just what that meant, but it was pretty obvious that his business was somehow music-related. When we returned home from our camping trip, I went online and checked out their website. And only then did I fully realize what swingin' neighbors I had.

Give 'em a listen and see if you don't agree.

(Photo by Kate Whitson. I hope she won't mind that I've reprinted it here.)

Autumn's Bounty

I suppose today might not be the best day to sing the praises of autumn in the Midwest. After all, the temperature in the Chicago area is a pretty humid 88 degrees Fahrenheit right now, not exactly a day to make you think of pulling out the cozy sweaters and firing up the fireplace.

According to the newspaper's weather page, we're as hot as Miami and New Orleans today, nearly as hot as Houston and Dallas.

But one of the nice things about living where I do is that the weather is always changing. So even as I'm sweltering, I can rest assured that this hot, humid September we've been having will soon segue into those refreshingly cool, crisp, colorful days of October.

There are many perfectly good scientific explanations for this sometimes welcome, sometimes vexing unpredictability of midwestern weather. But since this isn't a weather blog, I'll try to keep the meteorological explanations short but sweet.

Suffice to say that this area of the U.S. gets buffeted by just about every jet stream known to North America, so that the weather can change on a dime, depending on the prevailing winds.

Often during the winter, one of those fierce Canadian cold fronts will swoop down from the arctic regions of our fair northern neighbor. So on those days, we often find ourselves in the icy grip of waaaay-below-zero temperatures (I'm talking the kind of cold that can make a basketball cease to bounce, and nearly shatter it, or freeze the beer in the bottle before it touches your lips...trust me, I've tried both of these things when it was 25-below-zero Fahrenheit, just for the heck of it, so these are firsthand observations).

Then just when we've grown weary of this Inuit lifestyle, the winds might shift to the northwest and it can get quite balmy, if some of that milder Pacific air survives its trek across the Great Plains and gets to us. Or a southerly wind might bring us some of that wet, warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and turn the snow to fog, giving us temporary relief from frostbitten fingers and toes. Then there's the fact that we're in a temperate climate zone anyway, which means we're guaranteed four seasons a year.

Okay, sorry. That was more technical jargon than I'd planned to foist on you. So let me translate it all into practical terms. What it means is that--just when you can't bear the thought of trudging out covered from head to toe to shovel yet another five inches of heavy,wet, heart-attack snow off your driveway; just when your mood has become as gray and dreary as the dirty, tired mounds of snow that flank every road you drive on, as prickly as those dagger-like icicles hanging precariously from your gutters and looming over your front stairs, along come the first signs of the spring thaw.

You open the shades on a gloomy, bone-chilling winter morning and catch a blur of red-orange against the white backdrop; your heart gladdens as you mentally mark the date--usually sometime in March--of your first robin sighting. Or you spot the first tender green shoots of the crocuses poking their way through the snow, and you know that any day now, they'll be adding a dash of vivid purple to the dull winter palette.



And now back to autumn. After having sweltered through some of June, most of July and August, and now September, I've come to take the panoply of lush green, growing things around me for granted.

Unfortunately, this can sometimes happen when you've had too much of a good thing. For instance, after vacationing in the Florida Keys several times, my husband and I briefly entertained the notion of living down there year round...until we realized just how much we'd miss the winter, spring and fall if we lived in the land of eternal summer. I need that contrast that only the change of seasons can provide to help me truly appreciate the beauty of what's just passed and what's about to unfold. There's just nothing like surviving a long, cold winter to make you appreciate the arrival of spring and summer.

By the same reasoning, after a long Midwest summer, dare I say it? I'm suffering from green overload. Away with those verdant hues which I found so welcome and lovely in springtime and early summer! Bring on the warm rusts, oranges, golds, browns and maroons of autumn! I am eagerly awaiting that burst of physical and psychic energy known as autumn, or just plain "fall" as lots of us Midwesterners are wont to call it.

School seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year. But to me, no child should have to go back to school in the depths of summer, when the pools are still open, the mind is still in summer vacation mode, and we're still in those lazy, dog days of August.

But come September, I'm quite ready to have them (and me) back to the school routine. There's an inverse relationship between my ability to think and the temperature. As the latter climbs, the former tends to plunge. Like the pansy that I am, I tend to bloom profusely in the spring and fall, but wilt and lose my luster in the scorching heat of midsummer. But as the humidity and heat indexes drop, I feel a fog lifting from my mind and spirit. Suddenly I have a fresh outlook on life. I feel a renewal of mental and physical energy, meaning I can think and move again.



So I've managed to think of some of the many things I love about autumn here in the Midwest.

******************************************************************************

Apple pickin' time at the local apple orchard.

The warm, brilliant earth-tones of leaves at the peak of their turning, so that everywhere you go you're surrounded by a palette of rusty-browns, luminous golds, oranges, reds, maroons and even eggplant purples.

The potted mums in similar rustic, earthy hues, lending that special autumn feel to so many front porches and yards.

Many of your neighbors become artists, creating lovely autumnal still lifes in their front yards out of artfully placed mums, corn-husk bundles and bales of hay.

The gourds in so many twisted, primitive shapes and harvest colors.

The sky a deep, more brilliant blue than at any other time of year.

Walking under a canopy of turning maples, aspen or birches and being bathed in a golden, glowing light.

Weekend trips to pumpkin farms with their corn mazes, homemade haunted houses, homebaked goods like apple-cider/cinnamon donuts, homemade jams and salsas in fancy jars, apple crisp, apple or pumpkin pie topped with a dollop of whipped cream, and oh, just about apple anything. Hayrides out to the pumpkin-dotted fields and through the rust-colored oak trees. Watching the kids search for the "perfect pumpkin."

The formerly yearly appearance of "Injun Summer" (http://www.tuxjunction.net/injunsummer.html)

in the Chicago Tribune magazine. Some of the phrases and terms the author uses--"cigar-store Injuns," "redskins," etc.--are by today's standards in very poor taste and understandably offensive to many Native Americans. Still...I've included a link to it just because it's so durn evocative of autumn, and I really DO think its heart was in the right place when it was written in the early 1900s. (Note the sad, almost mournful acknowledgement that the "Injuns" have all "gone away.")

Backyard bonfires with hot chocolate, apple cider and s'mores.

Big yellow or orange harvest moons.

Time to dig out the cozy, bulky sweaters, fall jackets and long-sleeved shirts again.

No more sweaty face and frizzy hair.

Trick-or-treaters crunching through the dead leaves as they make their way to your door.

A fire crackling in the fireplace.

Hot coffee tastes good again, something to savor rather than just endure for a caffeine buzz.

Raking the leaves with my husband, the kids and the dog, then jumping into the piles with all of 'em.

The gnarly, twisty, slightly spooky look of bare oak tree branches silhouetted against the sky at twilight.

Cooking hearty, savory stews and soups in the crockpot.

Getting the urge to bake again.

Warming up the kitchen by firing up the oven to bake cookies and brownies again.

And on that note, I'll sign off for now by wishing you all a colorful, spirit-rejuvenating, magical autumn.

The Most Dangerous Game?

My ten-year-old son came home from school the other day and informed me that tag has been banned from the playground.

I asked him why, and he said the new principal made this rule, because he thought tag was too dangerous and worried that some kids would get hurt. After doing some googling on this subject, it's apparent that our school is not alone in banning this "most dangerous game" from the playground.

Now I'm all for playground safety. This same son broke his arm badly two years ago after falling from a brand-new piece of playground equipment that was dangerously high, and landing on a way-too-thin layer of woodchips. And we cared enough about the safety of our son and the other kids to raise a bit of a fuss about it--enough of a fuss so that the very next day, there was a dump truck parked beside the school playground, dropping off a small mountain of protective mulch to add to the meager amount that was already there; enough of a fuss so that this gizmo was declared off-limits to the kids until it got lowered considerably.

But no more tag? Come on! According to my son, the kids are still allowed to play running games (now isn't that nice of them, granting the kids permission to run...at recess...on a playground?), as long as they don't involve chasing anyone. Call me a cynical mother of only boys, but when I suggest "peaceful" games like that to my kids, they call me a "hippie."

Yes, I strongly discourage my kids from being aggressive or violent towards others in their play. But even I would draw the line at tag. Usually it's all about the running, or pursuing friends who want to be chased.

And with so many of our children overweight, don't we want to encourage them to run and move their bodies vigorously during those rare chances they get during their school day? With so much of it devoted to standing obediently and quietly in lines, or sitting obediently and quietly in desks filling out worksheets and being "taught to the tests," with gym time shrinking as their waistlines grow, don't we want to encourage them to make the most of their short recess breaks by running around freely?

Apparently a couple of kids in Colorado complained that they didn't want to play, but were somehow forced to anyway. But isn't forbidding everyone to play tag the easy way out of this little predicament? Wouldn't it be better to use this situation as one of those "teachable moments?" For instance, those students who don't want to play could be encouraged to find ways to speak out and stand up for themselves, and the tag players could be taught consideration and respect for the feelings and personal boundaries of others. Or couldn't they just allocate a certain part of the playground for games of tag?

I loved dodgeball as a kid too, but the banning of that one makes a lot more sense to me. Now that was a game where only the strong survived, where there was always a very real risk of injury. It could be quite terrifying for the timid or non-aggressive student, like facing a firing squad. It was often a way for the bigger, meaner kids to literally attack the weaker kids right under the watchful eyes of the gym teacher.

(But on the other hand, it was also a fun way for a boy to let a girl know he liked her. I can remember finding it kind of thrilling and exhilarating to get singled out, to get plastered repeatedly with that big rubber ball by a boy I thought was cute. It was usually one of those telltale signs that he had a bit of a crush on me too.)

But yes, it was quite an aggressive, forceful game, whose sole purpose was to literally knock others out of play.

Yet I can never remember getting harmed in any way by a game of schoolyard tag. True, whenever a game involves running, there's the risk of someone falling or tripping. But that can happen going down a crowded stairway in the school building, or jostling for a place in the cafeteria lunch line.

I think what's happening is a few of those overprotective, hovering parents who don't want their kids playing are complaining loudly and ruining it for ALL the kids, who will be denied the wonderful memory of playing tag on the playground with friends. Or maybe the schools are trying to protect their butts from lawsuits. Either way, it seems an overreaction to me, another fun childhood pastime falling by the wayside.

Hopefully some day our kids will get sensible again and reclaim tag for their own kids. But like so many of those playground games that just don't seem to get passed down any longer for various reasons--like foursquare or tether ball or red light/green light--they'll first have to look up the rules on some website.

Teenagers These Days....

This wasn't starting out well.

I had just parked the Jeep in the high school parking lot. My two boys (ages 10 and 5 at the time) and I had just gotten out of the car, eager to head to the gym for their older brother's basketball game.

Two male students walked by, absorbed in a conversation. One of the first words I heard as they got within earshot was the F-word. They just blurted it out as loudly and casually as you please when they were right next to us. My kids looked up at me with slightly shocked expressions. I stood there a little stunned myself, wondering why they couldn't have lowered the volume just a notch as they approached us, at least for the part of the conversation featuring that word.

It was almost as if they'd wanted us to hear them say it.

Immediately I went into my I'm-turning-into-my-parents mode: indignant and inwardly fuming. How could they use that word so loudly and carelessly around young kids, in front of somebody's mom, for goodness sake, and with no shame! I started thinking all those kids-these-days thoughts: they're so rude, self-centered, no respect for their elders, etc.

Now I'm no prude when it comes to swearing. Not that I do too much of it myself. I try to save those powerful words for those rare occasions when I really need them. But I grew up in a pretty hardscrabble, blue-collar area, so a lot of the people I hung out with in high school were chronic swearers. Many of them had probably learned it at home. Or just thought it leant to their street cred. It never bothered me too much to hear it. I was just used to it I guess; some of the kids in my crowd used (or I should say, overused) the F-word as just another adjective. But even the worst offenders among them would check the swear-words at the door when in the presence of little kids and adults, especially if those adults were--egads!--somebody's parents.

But not these 21st century teenagers. This wasn't the first time this has happened to me; I've encountered groups of profanity-hurling teens while grocery shopping with my kids, in movie theater lobbies, etc. Again, it's the nonchalance with which they do it--even within full earshot of children and older adults--that I find a little disturbing. Many of them use these words indiscriminately to express even the mildest annoyance at something.

So with all these thoughts steaming inside of me at this point, I had worked myself into a bit of a stew, and was feeling pretty fed up with their whole generation. Definitely not the right sort of mood to be in when you're about to face a whole gymnasium full of 'em.

As we entered the school building, I tried to shake off all the negativity, to rid myself of those venomous thoughts. I didn't want those thoughts to poison my enjoyment of my son's game. Well, it didn't take long to stop thinking that way. What happened next helped me to change my mind about those teens and to hold out hope for them, lots of hope.

Coming from the stillness of the bleak, wintry outdoors, the loud, electric atmosphere in the gym was a total contrast. The place was positively buzzing! The bleachers were packed on both sides. What was unusual about this was the fact that this was a morning game, held while school was in session. Most of the students had come here rather than going to study hall. So they didn't have to be here. And that's a big point, which you'll see in a minute.

As the two teams walked out from the locker rooms to take their places on their respective benches, the crowd roared...for both teams, home and visitors. The players, in full uniform, beamed and waved up at the bleachers, feeling the love.

But this is where I need to mention that these weren't just any old high school basketball teams. Both teams consisted of all the TMH students from their respective high schools; in other words, these were the "teachable mentally handicapped" kids. (That's the official label the education system in Illinois gives to the more severely handicapped students, as opposed to the "educable mentally handicapped," who are higher functioning.)

But you wouldn't know that it wasn't Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin out there from the way the crowd of their non-disabled peers whooped and hollered and cheered them on!

All these young, able, "normal" students were giving these kids the grand reception, making these two teams--filled with many clumsy, lumbering, often confused players--feel like graceful, revered NBA superstars.

Some of the players couldn't quite find their way to the basket without a friendly assist from their personal aides; and still the crowd cheered them on. Some of the players passed the ball into play by rolling it down a ramp from their wheelchairs; and still the crowed roared.

Still others (like my laid-back Daniel, who has Down syndrome) were more content to just stand in the middle of the court as the game moved back and forth around them, exchanging high-fives with another disabled friend. And still the crowd got to its feet and clapped even louder.

There was no smirking from those students in the bleachers, no pointing and laughing, no making fun. They just radiated so much genuine enthusiasm and affection out to both of those teams on the court. They really paid attention to the game, following the action closely, cheering or getting all hushed at all the right moments.

At one point I overheard a student sitting behind me in the bleachers ask his friend if he knew the name of the player in the #18 jersey, who was dribbling the ball down the court. "Oh, that's Mike," answered his friend. So the next thing I heard was shouts of "Go Mike!" and vigorous applause coming from behind me. Mike (who also has Down syndrome) stopped in mid-dribble and glanced up towards the bleachers, surprised to hear his name shouted out. Then he flashed a huge, proud grin that crinkled the corners of his sweet, slanted eyes.

And did I mention that the school's marching band was on the sidelines in full force, bleating out plenty of "We Will Rock You" riffs and other rabble-rousing numbers on their horns and drums to pump up the players and the crowd? And the cheerleaders cheered and clapped and did their flips and stacked themselves in their pyramids, putting just as much effort and skill into their routines as they would for the varsity team. From the energy in the gym that day, you'd think it was the biggest game of the year.

These weren't bored, miserable kids coerced into watching the game by their teachers after being admonished to be nice to the "retarded kids." They all seemed to be enjoying every minute of it, almost as much as the basketball players themselves.

It was all enough to bring tears to the eyes of a mom of a disabled son, and it did.

And it also made me feel really guilty for thinking those cynical thoughts I'd been thinking out in the parking lot. True, there are a lot of shallow, rude, disrespectful, self-obsessed teenagers out there. Always have been and probably always will be. But there are also so many like those teenagers in the gym that day, who gave those mentally challenged kids their chance to be recognized and to shine, and to feel very good about themselves.

And that makes me feel pretty good.

(Black & White photo borrowed from the Special Olympics Northern California website, color photo from the North Carolina Special Olympics website.)

"Two Roads Diverged...."

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

From Mountain Interval, 1920.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

*************************************

Greetings to anyone who's found their way here. Thanks for stopping in.

This is my third--and what I hope will be my most successful--attempt at maintaining a blog. I managed to keep one for several months back in 2005. Unfortunately, it was hosted by my former dial-up Internet provider, Earthlink. So when I finally graduated to DSL and dropped the dial-up, my blog got sucked into a black hole in cyberspace and disappeared forever.

I've been meaning to start up a new one ever since.

So today--with my kids on the verge of starting up school again--feels like a good day for me to try this again. I figure it might be easier for readers to find me here. I get the feeling this site is much more of a happenin' place for bloggers and blog readers than earthlink ever was. Put it this way: it wasn't a good sign when I realized that my blog was the only one I'd ever heard of whose address ended in "earthlink.net." So I concluded that it might not exactly be a blogging hotbed over there, might not be the place to be if you want someone to actually find you and read what you've written. And of course that's the whole point, isn't it?

Because my aim is clarity and not confusion, I'll start by explaining why I chose "The Long Way to Germany" as the title of my blog. Also why I've started it off with that famous Robert Frost poem.

*************************************

This particular poem describes the pivotal point my life was at in 1984--both figuratively and literally--more perfectly than any other piece of poetry I've ever encountered. (And my, isn't that a lot of alliteration?)

I had just completed a bachelor's degree in English Literature, and was working on my first semester of graduate school. The wheels were turning just as they were supposed to be, propelling me along smoothly on my career path, with the only bump in the road being a small one indeed: just the acute stagefright I experienced every time I stepped in front of my Freshman Comp. class. It didn't help that my students were all 18 or 19, and I was just 22. I just didn't feel like a "real" teacher yet. Didn't think anyone could possibly take me seriously in that role.

Yet I had enough common sense to realize that the minute I let them know that, the minute I let them smell my fear, they'd eat me alive. So I tried hard to pretend I was as stern, mature and confident as Miss Jean Brodie. (Remember, this was 1984. I didn't yet have Maggie Smith's portrayal of that other stern, confident, experienced teacher, Minerva McGonagall, to be inspired by, or I would've conjured her too--and a few of her spells--every time I walked into that classroom.)

So yes, everything was going along well...until the day I found out I was "with child." (That, you see, hadn't been a part of my plan, which up until that point had involved an eventual Ph.D. and professorship.) While I was still trying to deal with this little crimp in my plans, the very next day I got news of a different sort. I found out that I'd been accepted into a study-abroad program I'd applied for...in Germany. Talk about a double whammy! Talk about a roller-coaster ride of wildly conflicting emotions!

My English professor (who was not actually English at all, but an ascot-wearing, graying-at-the-temples German gentleman) had a smile on his face as he asked me to step into his office to break the good news to me. (At this point he had no idea about my other "news.") He didn't seem to notice my mixed reaction to his excited, happy announcement that I'd been accepted. As he looked over the brochure with me, he pointed to a photo of the "dorm" I'd be staying in at the University of Regensburg. I put that in quotes, because the 500-year-old building was more like a castle, a picturesque stone building complete with a large turret, right next to an ancient stone bridge arching over a tranquil river. Like an illustration out of a storybook.

My heart sank as I realized all I'd be missing. I knew he'd be very disappointed too when I told him that this dream that he'd help make come true for me just wasn't going to happen, that instead of heading to Regensburg the following fall, I'd be moving back to the suburbs and setting up house with my high school sweetheart.

For after standing at that crossroads for a few days, imagining where each road might take me, talking it all over with my boyfriend back home, I decided that was the only "road" I could travel.

Perhaps it isn't exactly accurate to refer to the path I chose--the one that lead to domestic life in the suburbs--as the one "less traveled by." After all, there are many more women who become suburban mothers and housewives than get paid to spend a year studying in magical, medieval Regensburg, Germany. But otherwise, just about every line of that Frost poem perfectly describes the way I felt for those few days in the spring of 1984, when I had to decide which path to travel.

But that other road turned out to be a lovely, fulfilling journey in its own way. It's been a good, happy life for the most part since that fateful day. And I WILL get to Germany someday, maybe when the kids are just a little older and there's more "luxury money" in our coffers. But for now, I try to keep my German skills up to par by speaking German whenever I get the chance, just so I don't forget it. And I continue to enjoy the journey along the road I've chosen. And that's what I plan to write about here in this space. Of course, if I ever do get to take that long-awaited trip to Germany, you'll hear all about that, too.