FROM TREES TO TOWERS

I am posting this essay that was written about 10 years ago.  Much has changed in our language and understanding of gender as a construct.  I will work on updating this to reflect more gender fluidity.  In the meantime, please feel free to substitute your favorite noun or pronoun for my use of the word "boy." My use refers to an inquisitive, energetic, impish child whose energy usually outlasts my own.

 Sensible parenting falls somewhere between oppressively strict and dangerously lenient, in that vast terrain that stretches from disconnected to “helicoptering”. I often struggle with negotiating the balance between technology and quietude, allowing my children to keep up with current culture and technology, while making sure that they know how to handle a world without electricity or constant cyber-madness. Can you entertain yourself? Get yourself something to eat? Handle emergencies, or a simple handshake?

Not having grown up with brothers, I’ve been surprised by how physically challenging parenting a boy can be. I remember one morning coming to terms with the fact that a forty-year-old woman and a four-year-old boy have vastly different ideas about how to spend a Saturday. I was trying to keep him safe, as he crawled all over the place, out of his crib, on top of sheds, in trees.

While it was tempting to plug him into something just to find his PAUSE button, I resisted that urge, pushing him instead in other directions: Get a stick, find a ball. My friend still laughs at the time she called and I was “just drawing” with my daughter, while she was crawling out of her own cramped house, looking for someone to accompany her and her son to the playground. When my boy came along, I called her and simply said “So, now I know why you didn’t get much coloring done.” She had already known that young boys had different ideas about Saturday.

Boys will busy themselves wrestling, shooting, hiding, jumping and building. A constant source of amusement and intrigue for me is witnessing backyards transform into battlegrounds, trees into towers and walls into sniper posts. An energetic, imaginative child can turn a sloping patch of grass into a football stadium or a baseball diamond.

Every once in a while, though, there are startling moments of surprise tempered only by amusement. Like last Saturday when I discovered my son in a recycling bin. Green barrel, lid closed, son tucked inside. My face registered how gross I thought it was. I suggested that he really didn’t want to be in there. Oh no, he reassured me, he did. Not only was it pretty clean (compared to the garbage bin apparently), it was comfortable. And evidently, I had narrowly missed the real action.

Like an astronaut home from orbit, he was just disembarking from his journey. While I had disappeared into the house to fold laundry, he and his cousin had been taking turns wheeling each other up and down the street in the recycling bin. Lid closed. At full speed.

Luckily they didn’t both fit inside together, so one lowered himself in, while the other held onto the handle and ran like a cowboy on an open plain.

So yeah, my story hasn’t changed much. We have vastly different ideas about how to spend a Saturday.

Megan Davis Collins confesses that she and her sister used to crawl around in the sewer like rats, but would never have climbed into a recycling bin. Boys are just different.

A Cold Goodbye

Goodbyes are difficult for me. No matter how brief an encounter, I manage to end up feeling slightly sad to say goodbye.  I guess it’s ultimately a need to acknowledge what we’ve shared, and how fleeting life is.  It could be a server or bartender, a table-neighbor at an all-day conference, a particularly friendly nurse or hygienist.  Actually, the last time I had blood and urine collected for labs, I found myself wondering if I would ever see the phlebotomist again. She had gently probed my inner arm, in the tender way a dear friend might if she were a phlebotomist, prodded the crease right inside the bend of my elbow, finding the perfect, accessible vein.  I rarely miss, she had boasted playfully. I trusted her. She gave me instructions on how to collect my urine, explaining how to place the specimen cup inside a shoebox-sized metal door on the bathroom wall of the bathroom, attached to the lab room where she worked. As I set down my cup, warm with the urine I had just collected, I thought of opening the door to say goodbye, then caught myself.   

Today, as we carpooled to work, my husband and I talked about throwing someone out of our house who had been with us for sixteen years.  It felt like abandoning a family member.  Knowing I was upset, my husband, unendingly sympathetic in that moment, had said I get it, you're attached.  She practically raised this family. It's the right decision, but it's hard. He was talking about our refrigerator. She was almond-colored, rusting in places, banged up a bit, and, let’s face it, had her freezer on the bottom.  I was tired of squatting down to root for the frozen dinners we had stashed there.  But I couldn’t imagine our kitchen without her.  True, she no longer matched the other appliances, but should that be a reason to remove someone from the home?  Having been promised seventy-five dollars to recycle her made me feel like a pimp.  As I stripped her naked in the kitchen, removing all of the colored magnets, school forms and postcards, I tried not to cry.  She still worked, for God’s sake.  What made it worse was that just when I began to comfort myself with thoughts of her providing nutritionfor another family, a group home or a couple just starting out, I learned that, in fact, she was to be dismantled, essentially dismembered. Then distributed to all sorts of factories and assembly lines to be used for her parts.  An organ donor before she was even dead.  

Her shiny replacement arrived the next day: stoic, haughty, confident. She purred like a sleeping kitten.  Her insides gleamed under the fancy new lighting, twinkling rows of, what can only be described as Christmas lights.  She was roomy, and had a beautiful expansive freezer perched right in her generous bosom.   But all I could think of was my worn, almond beauty, the one with the streaks of red marker, the Curious George magnets, and the school picture of my son from last year. I couldn’t imagine Ms. Shiny Pants tolerating such nonsense. 
Having wiped down her insides, I filled her, item by item, with the few vegetables and containers I had left. She was roomier, a better design for our current needs. But I found her impatient and demanding. She complained if I left the door open too long. I know she had a job to do, and big shoes to fill, so continued patiently packing her with our family's food, whispering Shut up only once, out of earshot, trusting that someday I would grow to love her. I even realized somberly that she could someday outlive me. When I noticed that I had forgotten to give the recycling guys the large white freezer basket from our old fridge, my throat caught, as if I had found an old sweater left behind by a family member who had recently died. I considered tossing it out, then decided to repurpose it as a container for cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink. I comforted myself with the thought that it was left behind deliberately, that maybe I'm not the only one who has trouble with goodbyes.

Welcome to 2019

Clearly, it is time to update this blog.  In the meantime, please enjoy some older treasures from The View from 129.

Flying Solo

Looking at a picture of me in my wedding gown, my grandmother told me that I belonged in Vogue magazine. I couldn’t believe that she said that. But, really, I could believe it. Since I had been a baby, my grandmother Ababel had been telling me how special and beautiful and wonderful I am.

So it should have been no surprise, when I gave her a picture of me as a bride, standing awkwardly on the rocks in Maine, smiling for the camera, that she said that I belonged in Vogue.

I was special just because I was her granddaughter. And she recounted with great pride the phone call she received on October 27^th 1966, from my dad telling her that she was a grandmother. And, how she and Georgie, my late grandfather, flew to Boston to meet Megan Elizabeth. Who, by the way, was the most stunningly gorgeous baby in the whole world. I know because Ababel told me so.

And she would tell anyone who would listen about this spunky little girl with the beatific smile, prancing around in her white “glubs” and patent leather shoes. This precious girl who went to say her grandmother Isabel’s name and uttered it as only she could, a few melodious toddler-like syllables: Ababel.

Once, my sister and I flew to Pennsylvania alone, and were treated like royalty, wearing badges that said Flying Solo. The flight staff doted on us continuously, giving us extra bags of peanuts and cups of ice with soda. We assumed that they must have known Georgie and Ababel, who had been waiting for us in the airport window, probably before the plane even left Boston. I remember stepping off the plane feeling like a celebrity. Which is easy to understand, really: they had actually submitted an article to their local paper about our visit.

Even recently, I would get phone calls from Ababel wherein she would tell me how special and important I have always been to her, transmitting feelings to me that only a doting grandmother truly can. No matter where I went or what I did, she praised me and prayed for me.

I traveled to Dominican Republic to dig latrines for people living in impoverished rural areas. Ababel treated me like I was in the United Nations. After college, I drove to Florida to live on my own for a while, stopping in Pennsylvania on the way down for some food, a place to stay, and a dose of grand-parenting, which came freely and lovingly. Any doubts I had about succeeding on my own melted away in the glow of Ababel and Georgie’s affection. My car loaded with sandwiches, drinks and a healthy ego, I was ready for anything.

It was well-known that babies and animals loved and were comforted by Ababel. On my refrigerator, I keep a precious worn photo of her, as she gently rocks my contented three-month-old daughter to sleep.

My young son once caressed her arm and asked her why her skin was so smooth. She erupted into laughter, and then called her friends to brag about this little gentleman who had unwittingly earned a place in her already-crowded heart.

Lately, she had grown weaker and was unable to write, but she called to check in, and whenever I called her, she made me feel as welcome as I did when I was five. Oh Megan, I was just thinking about you. You’ve made my day. She always apologized for running up my phone bill, while never making me feel like she wanted to get off the phone.

And every phone call ended with her reminding me how special I was and singing I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck…with a request that I hug everyone in my family for her.

When I got the call last Wednesday, that Ababel was failing, I was surprised, but not completely unprepared. I had talked to her the day before and I could hear the strain in her voice, the labor in her breath. I could also hear something else. Concern. But it was for something unexpected.

She was aware that my son’s birthday was approaching, and I sensed her concern that she was going to die or otherwise interfere with his birthday. You see, she was always the grandmother, now great grandmother, ever the guardian of the little children in our family.

She knew how special a birthday was for a little boy, as well as how meaningful it would be for his mother, the baby she had first held on that October afternoon over forty years ago.

Relying on advice that she had always given me, I reminded her that she shouldn’t worry because things always have a way of working out, exactly the way they are supposed to. Agreeing, in her most cheerful voice, she began her song to me I love you a bushel and a peck…

She died the next day surrounded by her family, a lucky handful who had only known life while enveloped in her warmth. Her angels came swiftly, the way we had all hoped, a unique celestial flight staff, doting on this beautiful lady. Our family imagined her on her way to see Georgie, waiting for her in the window, probably since before her flight even began.

On my journey, flying solo, this girl without a grandmother, I comfort myself with memories of being adored and cherished. I remind myself that while I won’t find her in her recliner or on the other end of the phone, I will always have what she gave me. I am a Vogue model, a world-class traveler, a beautiful girl, and a truly special person. Just because I was her granddaughter.

Megan Davis Collins wrote this column in loving memory of Isabel Richardson Davis, who died on July 2, 2008, at the age of 94

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The Elephant in our Friendship

I learned about twelve years ago that you should not talk politics with your friends. My friend and I were yakking it up about things happening in the world. I was talking Clinton, she was talking Bush. And then I realized that she was stroking elephants, I was petting donkeys.

I approached the conversation in a different way. That didn’t work. Soon, we were screaming at each other. I was puzzled, then I was hurt. A third-party observer pulled me aside and said “Never talk politics with your friends”.

I had heard that cliché before but thought it only applied to angry old men in the fifties. Don’t talk politics, religion or money…Yeah yeah yeah, but who really thought it was true? I never did. Until I realized that my friend was a Republican.

She always seemed a little more conservative than I, perhaps a little less tolerant. She sometimes calls me a granola-crunching tree-hugging hippie, but hey, that’s just a little good-natured ribbing between friends. You really voted for Bush…AND his son?

Don’t even tell me you are considering Hillary for president.

Yeah, I was. The problem has not gone away. I avoided politics for over 12 years with her. And then, over a glass of wine, I saw her rolling her eyes at my Hillary sign. Actually she screamed out loud when she saw it hanging on my front door.

The shouting started up again- she, calling me a fool for giving another Clinton a chance, me calling her a traitor for not considering voting for a woman in the White House. She accused me of trying to get people to vote for someone just because she’s a woman. That’s not what I’m saying, but come on MITT ROMNEY??!

Now, it’s all about John McCain. I keep getting emails about McCain’s superior stance on the economy, the war, and illegal immigrants, as compared to Obama’s crazy, hippie, loosey-goosey, anti-American sentiments on all of the above and more.

I start to shoot off an email countering each point, but then remember the wise words from that third-party observer back in 1996. I am not going to win this. Neither will she. So, I delete the email, but can’t help sending a curt ‘Give it up, he’s gonna lose”.

As fate would have it, this friend and her rather large pet elephant, were at my kitchen table shortly after McCain had picked his controversial running mate. As we watched CNN, over a few drinks, I was feeling kind of smug. Is this pick for real? Mr. McCain seems to have gotten sucked into the Obama drama, impulsively picking the youngest, most unexpected candidate he could find, forgetting about- oh, I don’t know- THE VICE PRESIDENCY!

My friend remained calm, reserving judgment. I sensed that she was a little nervous. But, like any good Republican, she kept her comments to herself, mumbling that she’d have to do some research on this woman from Wasilla.

No need. The research emerged, the controversies continued. As is typical, what should have been politics as usual, turned into something akin to Inside Edition. Over the next week, I watched in horror as the spin backfired. What was supposed to be a gaffe, turned into an up-by-her-bootstraps story. Her fiery speech, like some gigantic pep rally, got the elephants jumping. And the pounding was hurting my ears.

What remains clear, now as it was back in 1996, is that friends shouldn’t talk politics, because people are not really interested in changing their minds. Certainly not the two seated at opposite ends of my kitchen table.

Recently, things have really become heated. She sent me a picture of Obama next to Osama bin Laden in some sort of ridiculously offensive poster. I called her racist. She mentioned the “lipstick on a pig” comment; I called her sexist. If anyone had said that about a male candidate (and MANY politicians have), no one would have been offended. Now, people are implying that women need to be protected.

C’mon! I thought she was a pit bull! More emails flew back and forth. Womansaynotopalin is a website for women to speak out against this choice (who, incidentally, speaks out against our choice). What about the notion, in the wake of losing Hillary, that just any woman would make a suitable candidate? That’s pigslop!

I even hit “reply all” to desperately try to reach anyone in her circle of elephants who would listen to me. Will I never learn? The elephants don’t want donkey food. And I would sooner vomit than listen to their foolish trumpeting. Although I did get one reply: it was just my friend assuring me that I wasn’t a donkey, I was a jackass.

But I was too busy trying to finish this sentence to care: “If the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick, then the difference between the Governor of Alaska and the Vice President is…”

I heard jokes about Obama’s inexperience. I fired back about McCain’s hawkish approach to the US at war. She asked me what I would do if my daughter came home with “that problem”. (Does she mean “pregnant”?). I ranted about the need for open discussion and education, not just preaching abstinence and repression.

I screamed at her for voting for someone so anti-women’s rights. Censorship! Drilling in Alaska’s virgin territory. Don’t get me started about drilling in anyone’s virgin territory! I was out of control. Angrily tapping on my computer. Sweating. Muttering. Swearing. I called her ignorant. She called me clueless. Friends, it’s voting season!

By the time this appears in print, I will have cooled down. I may even have a certain someone at my kitchen table. By then, I will pour her a drink and tell her that I still love her. Even if I do occasionally call her a racist, sexist pig…with lipstick.

Megan Davis Collins is a writer, social worker and mother: megdavcol@gmail.com

Ask Your Mother

If you are like me, you have probably been in a situation wherein your child says something in front of other people that you would never, in your wildest dreams, have wanted him to say. As a parent, you may struggle to balance the need for honest confrontation with the strong physical urge to disappear.

Questions like “Why is she so big?” “Is he a leprechaun?” “What happened to his nose?” “Why does she talk like that?” are fine fodder for the privacy of your home or car, but when asked in a public setting, often in front of the person in question, they challenge our reserve and dignity as parents.

If we are lucky to have our own mothers around, a call to them may offer some wisdom on how best to address these well-meaning, but overly-inquisitive, little people.

Once, in an effort to expose my daughter to the variety of people living in our world, I brought her to the nursing home where I worked. What a wonderful idea, you may think.

What a smart, sensitive mom I am to teach my adventurous, inquisitive little four-year-old daughter that there are people who struggle every day. Much can be learned from life in a nursing home, although, as usual, the lessons we learned were not what I had planned.

I was excited for her to leech wisdom from the elders in our tribe. The visit began predictably, as I had explained that it might. Lots of wrinkled smiling people reaching for her hand, touching her face.

She tolerated it and even blushed a few times when they gushed about her beauty and curls, her youth and strength.

I wasn’t even thinking about how Patrice would look through my daughter’s eyes as we entered her room, so caught up was I on shuttling diplomacy between youth and age, innocence and wisdom.

Patrice greeted us skeptically, but not hostilely. Stoic and reserved by nature, she seemed slightly amused by my miniature assistant. When I felt my daughter freeze at my side, I realized my lapse in judgment.

Patrice had one leg, the other a stump that was jutting out of her johnny. She had a patch over her eye and oxygen tubes up her nose. She was tremulous. And, unfortunately for us, she was eating scrambled eggs.

While my child remained hidden behind my legs, peering out nervously, I answered questions.

“Who’s going to clean her up?” “Where’s her leg?” Is she a pirate? Can we go home?”

I began facilitating our conversation in my loud social work voice. “Patrice, my daughter is worried that your eggs are on your shirt. I told her that after you eat, someone will come to help you clean up.”

She burst out laughing and immediately felt what so many of us do in the presence of a child: relief. For the honesty and candor that comes from someone in the room saying exactly what’s on her mind in an attempt to learn about the world.

After all, that’s what we have encouraged them to do. Right? Well, yes. Unless you’re in the department store line of a gender-ambiguous cashier.

“Is that a boy or a girl?” I have never made so much noise in line, talking over my son, rustling the bags as they were being filled, asking irrelevant and asinine questions. And talking in that loud social work voice I use when my world is in turmoil.

Then, to confuse everyone, I began singing “You’re a boy and I’m a girl and we’re buying cleaning supplies!”

The people behind me were amused. They wanted an answer to the question too.

I finally had to resort to an old parenting maneuver: The Smiling Desperate Whispered Plea for Asylum. I know you’re curious, but we really can’t talk about this here. It’s not polite. Wait until we’re outside.

As we headed out to the car, without knowing the gender of our clerk, I found myself wondering why it matters so much what someone’s gender is. I felt annoyed at the clerk for confusing us and at myself for being as curious as my son. I was struggling, as I often do, with just how honest I want my children or myself to be.

We preach honesty and curiosity, until it makes us uncomfortable. I was stumped. I knew it was not polite to ask somebody about their gender, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. Other than being none of our business, I wasn’t sure how to really explain this to my son. I like rules and reasons. I called my mother.

Someone who sees the humor in any situation, she values forthright discussion about anything. I knew her wisdom would guide me. She gave me the best answer I have ever heard on the subject.

Megan, tell him that the cashier knows what s/he is and it would hurt the cashier’s feelings if other people didn’t know.

My son listened and nodded and then I reminded him to save any and all questions about other people until we are alone.

“Can we tell people what we are?” I paused only briefly. Guided by my mother’s wisdom, I gave him the best answer I have ever heard on the subject. “You can tell them, just don’t show them.”

Megan Davis Collins is a mother, writer and social worker living in Billerica.

　

Rolling, Rolling Clothes Rack

It all began with a rolling clothes rack. My mother, once again, conned me into taking a carload of crap that was “really nice, wait ‘til you see it.” This is code for “I have limited storage space and no idea what to do with this junk.”

Luckily, I stopped the moving truck that was en route with an over-sized L-shaped, twenty-year-old, itchy sofa. When I told my family that “we’re getting a new couch!” it was my son who set me straight as he collapsed on our current couch and said “I HATE that thing!” That’s all it took to snap me back. What was I thinking? The same thing I’m always thinking when someone tries to peddle me their old furniture:

First, “hmmmm, we could really use a bigger couch [sewing machine, set of speakers, exercise bike …]” Second, I begin to feel righteous about reducing, reusing or recycling something. Finally: I announce to my family that we are “getting some new stuff!”

It is worth noting here that at this point, the recipient may feel a little triumphant about scoring the “goods”. But herein lies the classic con-artist maneuver: people don’t just hand over “goods.” Oversized suitcases and rolling clothes racks will outlive your entire family if you let them.

It’s like a bad cartoon: I’m left at the end of my driveway, a little bubble over my head with the words “Kablooey, she’s done it again!” Meanwhile, my mother is halfway back to Cambridge

I pull out the roll of canvas, rattling as it moves, unwrap it and discover that it looks very much like the rolling clothes rack I already have, except that this one, a generation older than mine, will soon be wearing a forest green dress. I stare at it, began inserting metal pipes into the rolling bottom shelf, and then break into a sweat as I realize that the pipes have to be inserted (jammed) into the designated holes at each corner of the “dress.” When complete, the whole ensemble stretches itself into a bad 1970’s camping tent. I know because I inherited three of them last time.

So now, I’m sweating and swatting at this hand-me-down prize, wondering how my day took this turn. It started out reasonably, with coffee, chatting with my children as they got ready for school, enjoying a peaceful walk in the woods with my dog, and suddenly, I’m involved in this rather violent skirmish with a hideous canvas clothes rack. The cruel twist? After its awkward assembly, I have nowhere to put it and nothing to put on it.

So I roll/drag/battle it out to the curb. Then, with the precision and determination of General Patton, I seize a lamp, a bag of blue streamers, some Christmas lights, a Pakistani rug, and three sets of galvanized rubber hooks, all “gifts” from my mother.

Kablooey. I’ve done it again.

Megan Davis Collins is in recovery for her recycling addiction. Email her at megdavcol@gmail.com