Choose An Identity

This is not an actual photo of me.

In the movie, You've Got Mail, Tom Hanks has this voice over scene in a designer coffee chain where he's talking about the modern obsession with fancy coffees. It's been a long time since I've seen the movie (I was so disheartened when I got my hair cut like Meg Ryan's in that movie and instead of looking like the adorable girl next door, I kind of looked like Elvis Presley. I digress.) but he comes to the conclusion that our exacting coffee orders are a way for us to be someone. I'm not just some poor schlub waiting for overpriced coffee, I'm triple! nonfat! venti! cappuccino! (Incidentally, I am so not that. I am Double Tall Latte, should you ever be buying.) That scene never fails to crack me up because as my husband likes to say in his "Dr. Phil guest" voice: "It's funny because it's true."

As society becomes more homogenized, we find ways to delineate ourselves, stand apart a bit. In high school, I had a lot of friends that went to British schools and wore uniforms. The point behind the uniforms being that it is less disruptive socially to just have everyone wear the same thing. Except that even so, you could still tell who was "cool" and who was not. Things like whether or not you pulled up your socks, or how close to askew your tie was became status indicators. We can't help it. We're hierarchical animals. We seek out others who resemble us and we use tiny, sometimes trivial clues to identify our comrades.

I resist being pigeon-holed because I like to believe I am a unique snowflake. Not really. I resist it because I am claustrophobic. I believe it is unfair to boil people down to a few outstanding characteristics and think of them only in that way. I put off blogging for nearly a year because I had no idea how to fill out the profile information. I can put a list of my favorite activities: cooking, knitting, sewing, playing with my monkeys, long walks in the rain, listening to music, reading books, writing nonsense, stalking people, taking naps, learning intensely personal information about relative strangers; and it leaves a very incomplete picture. It actually paints a picture of some sort of deranged old lady. (Or old man, as the email spammers seem to believe I am. So many solicitations for golf memberships, penis enlargement and AARP memberships.) I also resisted the label "mommy blogger" because while I love being a mom (or Mama, never Mommy) it doesn't entirely define me - a fact for which I have fought hard these last seven or so years - and while I will write about my monkeys from time to time, that's not all I write about. The profile is like the turned down socks on the private school uniform - one look and you just know whether that's someone you'll be friends with or not. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

One of the many wonders of Facebook is that it is an opportunity to hear from people you would otherwise never have bothered to keep in touch with. You get to hear who had a crush on you twenty years ago, who used to be afraid of you, who thought you were fabulous way back when. It's kind of like bookends on all those old insecurities. But one of the most amazing things about some of these Facebook reconnections is that people I haven't heard from in decades will pop up and say "I always respected so-and-so about you" and they are things that are still pretty true today. It's that link to something other, something prior. I have friends that I keep around because they knew me before I donned the identities of wife, mother, contributor to society, adult, taxpayer, etc. And oddly, they still know me now.

After this month of blogging every day and connecting through BlogHer, I am once again amazed at the ready connections that people make. I have been stunned speechless (almost) that some of the things that have been rolling around my noodle have hit a nerve with other people. I have been surprised and delighted to find so many wonderful bloggers out there doing just what I do - just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. I don't even know a lot of their real names, I don't know what they really look like or where some of them live, but I know what we have in common.

One of my very best friends from college came about because we both ended up in the same coffee shop one night completely fed up with ourselves and the people around us. We went someplace quiet to talk for a few hours and that few hours turned into all night. It wasn't really until we watched the sunrise from my car that we remembered that we were actually two distinct humans of different genders and the awkwardness that can arise from that. But until then, we were just two sets of ideas, eager to share, our words being our only identifying characteristics, and the comfort and sweet release of honest, uninhibited communication. I've thought about that several times over the last month of "meeting" new bloggers and reading new blogs. It's that same meeting of ideas and experience without the complications of "real life" but somehow, real life seeps in and you get a far fuller picture of people than if you simply met them on the street.

I laugh every time I leave a comment on Blogger because it always instructs me to "Choose an Identity". It cracks me up because I did that ages ago. I could be anyone I wanted to on this little blog of mine, but over the last month, I've discovered that I can't be anyone except who I am. I'll enter my log-in name and my blog address, because I know that Blogger isn't really asking me an existential question any more than Facebook is really asking "What's on your mind?" (although I must admit to a certain amount of mischievous desire to create alternate identities just for fun). My mom always says "You can't hide who you really are for very long." A notion that's both scary and liberating. Even when we try to hide behind intellectualizing or humor or whatever, who we are leaks out between the cracks. So this intense month of daily posting is over for most of us (I signed on for December because I need external motivation sometimes) but my hope is that the connection continues. Stay tuned. There will be a lot more crazy leaking out through the cracks and if you're very careful, you just might catch some magic out of the corner of your eye.

Earning My Stripes

The other day at the park, there were a group of mothers with toddlers who looked to be about 15-18 months. That wonderfully dangerous age where they are suddenly mobile, but lack the sense to know exactly how to use this new-found freedom. While I was sitting on a bench, knitting a Sounders scarf for my husband and keeping my third eye on my monkeys, the toddler-moms were trying to have a conversation with each other about baby food making and the best walking shoes in between smelling bottoms, hovering near the end of the slide, and snatching wobbly little legs from the edges of things.

I caught a few sidelong glances from the moms and double checked that my own little playground monkeys were being careful around the wee ones. No problems there today. I figured I'd imagined the glances and went back to knitting. A few minutes later, as one of the moms scooped about a half a pound of sand out of her son's mouth for about the 67th time, she turned to me and said "When do we get to knit?!"

I remember all too well the hovercraft days. My wee hooligan ate so much dirt as a toddler, the doctor wanted him tested for Pica (turns out he was just suffering from an acute case of being two.) My J-Bird was born independent and out-going and would toddle off to chat with whomever was around, no matter where we went; often inviting them to our house or giving them our phone number that she had so proudly memorized. I remember not being able to finish a sentence before having to sprint over and catch one or the other of them standing at the top of the big slide, leaning their out-sized heads out over the void. One trip to the pumpkin patch a few years ago, while I was helping Jane struggle with the pumpkin cutting shears taller than she was, I heard the sweetest little voice behind me say softly: "Deee-wicious!" I turned just in time to see Joe taking a huge bite of the dirt clod he was holding. IT WAS AN ORGANIC PUMPKIN FARM! Do you know what they use to fertilize their fields?!

I remember viciously envying the moms with clean hair and jeans that fit. I remember fashioning a diaper out of public restroom paper towels.  I remember how giant and wild and solid and careening the 4-year-olds at the park looked compared to my little bowlegged adventurers. I remember unceremoniously scooping up squirming masses of legs and elbows and hoofing it out of Dodge before all three of us burst into tears of exhaustion and frustration.

And suddenly, I realized I was remembering this stuff. These things were no longer a part of my day to day existence. I have no idea now what baby food mills are the best on the market or what shoes are good for early walkers, but there was a time in the not-so-distant past when those very things occupied a great deal of my mental energy and precious free time. My monkeys and I have moved on to new preoccupations now that will eventually become irrelevant as well.

There are days that seem like they are 107 years long. Some nights, even longer. There are moments when you think you might just lie down in the sand box and kick and scream along with them. And there are definitely times when you think you will subsist the rest of your life on discarded Goldfish crackers, crusts of rejected sandwiches and 16 gallons of coffee a day; that the rest of your life you are destined to make small talk about bodily functions; that you will never again be witty or intelligent because perhaps half your brain cells exited through your birth canal. But suddenly one day, you're sitting at the park with freshly washed hair, knitting a scarf while your monkeys play nicely on their own two legs and sipping a cup of coffee for its flavor instead of gulping it for its restorative properties and taking a moment to enjoy the sunshine and the scenery.

 I'm nowhere near done parenting yet. Not even halfway. I could strangle every person who says "Oh, they grow up so fast!". But this sudden bit of perspective, provided in the plaintive question from a frazzled mom - "When do we get to knit?!"- reminded me that nothing is forever, even when it feels like it might be. We just keep trudging, skipping, catching, playing, changing, wiping, yawning, crying, laughing through these days, one after another until suddenly we find ourselves on the other side of something.

That day at the park, I changed colors on the stripes I was knitting, tried my very hardest not to look smug, and smiled as I told her "Sooner than you think."