Happy Birthday, Mom

This one time, my mom went to a costume party dressed as a peacock, with this crazy fantastic dress in metallic blues and purples, and peacock feathers in her hair. From the living room window I watched her get in the car and I thought, she's a goddess.

This one Christmas, when we really, really didn't have much money, my mom wrapped every piece of every present individually--pencils, little soaps, wrapped candy--so I would have a lot to open. I was busy until mid-afternoon.

This one night, when we lived in Cairo, my mom paid a young man to secretly take us down into an open tomb at night. I was terrified, but I thought she was a modern-day Indiana Jones, and life was a grand adventure.

This one day, my mom got up super early and waited in line at Musicland with a bunch of teenagers so she could surprise me with tickets to the Prince (Purple Rain) concert.

This one year, my mom was gone and I missed her so much, I forgot who I was.

This one summer, my mom gave me the most beautiful wedding flowers you've ever seen in your life: cascading white orchids, gardenias, roses, lily of the valley. She cried when Dad escorted me down the path to the beach accompanied by Aretha Franklin's cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (one of two lullabies she sang to me).

This one afternoon, my mom buried her mother with no priest, and so spontaneously recited the rosary at her grave site. I could feel her mother, my grandmother who was born on almost on the same day, reaching down and taking hold of shoulders, giving her strength not to cry.

This one morning, I called my mom for reassurance, advice, to share good news, to cry, to brag, to ask for help, to gossip, to plan, to remember, to laugh, for the ten thousandth time.

Happy Birthday Mom. Here's the other lullaby you sang for me ("Que Sera, Sera") and your favorite song ("Let My Love Open the Door").

Dear Friends, I Am (Temporarily) Insane

Um, did you look at the poster for Synechode? I didn't give it a close look when I uploaded it for my previous post, but now I see it is a photo of my current predicament. We have a book going to print Tuesday, and I, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, am facing a vast sea of pages that seems to run on forever and ever and ever.

If you've ever felt so busy, so overworked that you can't remember who you are anymore, than you know how I feel at this moment--kind of insane.

I'm at the Copa, writing like mad, trying to not think too hard about what I've consumed (microwave popcorn and leftover Halloween candy) and what I should have consumed (um, vegetables). I'm also trying not to think about the fact that Jack has been feeling a bit crazy these past few weeks, too. More mood matching, I presume. Sometimes I think there's an invisible umbilical cord joining us together.

If you love me, please send booze and pie.

Mood Matching with Monologues

Sometimes well-written monologues, like sermons or healing stories, get you right where it counts. Sometimes they match your mood so perfectly, you feel as though the writer is speaking directly to you, or for you.

So I've only seen about an hour of Synecdoche, but the minister's monologue stopped me in my tracks and totally matches my mood today. (Thanks, Charlie Kaufman.)

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.

Amen, indeed.

Mom vs. Legend

One of the places mom went in pursuit of her dreams.

My mom wasn't like all of the other moms--the moms on TV who always looked well-groomed and well-rested; the moms at school who cooked dinner and remembered things like permission slips and hot lunch money; the mom of my childhood best friend, who made everything seem beautiful, and clean and normal.

It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that my mother was not like the others. Untethered to the earth, she fought valiant battles at home, searched for long-dead kings abroad and never pretended to be anything other than who she was. She didn't try to fit in or appeal to the masses. She didn't dumb herself down or keep quiet when her opinion was unpopular or downright subversive. My mom was not formed by marketing or society's expectations; she is 100% herself, through and through.

Growing up what impressed me most about my mom was her self-assured approach to working in her chosen field. She never doubted that, despite what the department heads believed, women could be of equal stature as men. Her tribe was a group of brainiacs--historians and linguists, mostly, who talked until dawn while the children slept on the floor, on couches, in the room next door. Her friends and colleagues adored her; she was their star. She never doubted herself, not once, at least not in front of me.

Because my folks divorced when I was three, it took her a lot longer to get her Ph.D. than she had planned. I remember the long hours at Jones Hall, sleeping on a cot while she toiled away at their mainframe computer. I remember countless days hanging out in the stacks at the University of Minnesota's giant library, Mom cloistered in the smoking room, studying. And I remember many mornings when I would find her asleep in her clothes, surrounded by books, her glasses hanging off the bridge of her nose.

The day she finally received her Ph.D. is one of my favorite days ever. Hundreds of students graduate from the U every year, so we had to sit through a long procession of B.S. and M.S. before the doctoral candidates walked up on stage. Early in the evening the emcee had asked everyone to hold off on clapping until the very last graduate received her diploma, so the auditorium had been quiet for hours and I was bored out of my friggin' mind.

But then I saw her, mom in her long black robe with the colored panels on the shoulder. When they announced her name someone in the back of the auditorium shouted, "Way to go, Nicki!" and even though there were two dozen students left to make the walk, the entire audience erupted in applause. This was her tribe and she was their star.

Years later, when she and some of her crew attended a college party full of hopeful undergrads there were murmurs in the crowd when they walked in, and someone said, "The legends are here." She never forgot who she was, and so she was unforgettable.

I, on the other hand, found my tribe and left it behind, over and over and over again. I'm pretty sure mom doesn't live with regret for the chances she did not take or the opportunities she ignored, but I do. Even though I have succeeded in other areas, I left my tribe and my true place in this world and I've been missing it ever since. I forgot who I was, trying to be the kind of mother I wished I had. I suppose it's not over yet, but most days it feels VERY over, and the best I can do is not enough for anyone.

Maybe she felt that way, too. Maybe mom felt less than and lost; maybe she has profound regrets that keep her up at night or yearnings that ache so much they make her cry. She wouldn't tell me. She's very private, and also would never burden me with the truth of how she got by and what she didn't get done while she was raising her career and raising me.

In today's Post Secret there's a postcard secret that reads, "I'm sorry if raising me kept you from being the artist you wanted to be." Yikes. I never want Jack to feel that. Because I don't feel that. I don't feel that my mom gave up on anything because of me, and this is one of her greatest gifts to me.

I didn't have a "normal" mom, partly because unlike so many women, she never pretended to be something that she wasn't (e.g., happy with waiting, sacrificing, forgetting) and she never settled. What I cannot reconcile is how to be the kind of mother I want to be, and the kind of woman I know I am. How do you honor your role as parent and honor your role in your other tribe? I have no fucking clue.

PS: If you want to see the postcard secret I mentioned you have to read Post Secret this week because he replaces them every Sunday. Also, you can turn that particular card over by hovering over it with your cursur/little white hand.)

PPS: I feel worse after this post. Usually writing these posts makes me feel better, or at least satisfied. Not today.

I Fell for Lloyd Dobler - Twice

So my friend Beth sent me a link to this news story about a bunch of guys in trench coats who celebrated the 20th anniversary of the release of the film Say Anything today by walking through New York City carrying boom boxes over their heads. (Thanks, Beth.)

This is just #2,397 why I love New York: random acts of awesomeness. But that's not why the gist of this post. What I really came here to say today is I fell in love with my girl because of Lloyd Dobler.

In case you're not familiar with my favorite 80s film of all time, Lloyd is the character played by John Cusack, who after graduating from high school, spends the entire summer wooing the unattainable gorgeous braniac Diane Court, played by Ione Skye.

The Say Anything fans wandering the streets of New York City are paying homage to the famous scene from the movie, where Lloyd stands outside Diane's window with a boom box over his head, blasting "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel.

I was sixteen when the movie came out, so that scene made a huge impression on me. What girl wouldn't want a guy like that? What girl wouldn't want to be brooded over like she's Juliet herself? Plus, Diane was a total geek, which made it all seem a bit more possible, you know? And Lloyd was his own brand of cool. He was anti-establishment but still totally affable. He was cute, but he didn't try too hard. He was earnest and dogged in his pursuit, but he still never lost his true north for the girl, you know?

His best friends were girls (oh Lilly Taylor, I miss you), everyone loved him and he had no idea what he wanted to be when he grew up. Lloyd had the best lines in the movie, too. Most people remember his monologue about his career plans ("I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career.") But my favorite is the message he leaves on Diane's machine after she breaks up with him:

"Maybe I didn't really know you. Maybe you were just a mirage. Maybe the world is full of food and sex and spectacle and we're all just hurling towards an apocalypse, in which case it's not your fault. I'm been thinking about all these things and...you're probably standing there monitoring. And one more thing - about the letter. Nuke it. Flame it. Destroy it. It hurts me to know it's out there. Later."

When I met Polly we were both 23 and spending too much time at the Blind Munchies coffee house, drinking copious amounts of coffee and inhaling way too much nicotine. Early on in our friendship she told me something that I now know was the beginning of everything. During a cutthroat game of rummy (Menomonie rules) she said offhandedly, "I aspire to be Lloyd Dobler."

Here was the guy I hoped existed--except she was a girl. I was kinda sorta in trouble, because my wild ways were about to be leveled by a quiet, short story-loving small town girl with perfect bone structure. I mean, I could probably say no to a guy who professed his admiration for the greatest character in a teen movie ever, but a girl who wanted to be just like Lloyd? I was toast.

Looking back, our budding relationship mirrored Lloyd and Diane's. Sure, my Dad wasn't put in prison for embezzlement, and Polly could give a shit about kickboxing (sport of the future!), but there are many similarities. A sampling:

- Polly was crushing on me from afar long before we became friends, just like Lloyd mooned over Diane before actually asking her out.

- Like Diane, I had plans to move away at the end of the summer, and didn't want a relationship.

- Polly and I had a lot of fun in the backseat of my car.

- Our first "our song" was "In Your Eyes."

- Above all else, Polly just wanted to spend as much time with me as possible. Like Lloyd, her aspiration was to be with me, and be great at it. (She is.)

Oh, and there's this photo from the movie, which reminds me of us because I'm always throwing my head back when I laugh (and she loves that about me).

The thing that I loved so much about Lloyd Dobler was his unabashed adoration of Diane Court. He didn't hold anything back. He had no ego about it, and he was willing to do anything to be with her. In the end he got the girl, packed up and moved with her to England to be with her while she pursued her big bright life, much like Polly did when she hopped in that moving van with me bound for Santa Fe almost 14 years ago.

Polly is as close to Lloyd as you can get. Lucky me. Is it any wonder I fell so hard?

PS: Here's the totally awesome trailer.



PPS: When I was searching for pics I came across a video a band called Say Anything performing their single "I Hate Everyone" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night. This one's for you, Fond du Lac Joe.