Reflections: Avon Walk For Breast Cancer 2014

I probably have too much distance from the walk at this point to accurately reflect on it.

But I am going to try anyway.

First, let me begin by saying that the one thing that stood out to me the most, the biggest impression I got, that I still have, the greatest shock I received came in the form of the outpouring of support I got from friends, family, and friends and family of friends and family.

One of my friends not only made a huge donation to the walk (after poo-pooing it for weeks! He's a stinker.)  but he also convinced friends of his, who have never met me, to also donate.

My mother's aunt came forward with a generous donation that I was pleasantly surprised by.

My sister's boss (again, never met me!) donated a hefty sum.

My aunt's boss, who I have only met a few times, both gave me some translation work to do for the pay that would go to the walk, and then doubled the promise commission when they donated to the walk.

A few of my coworkers stepped forward with nice donations.

Friends of my brother donated.  Even one kid who had no job gave me 10 bucks!  So sweet.

My investment banker donated.

And then of course, there are the amazing individuals, close friends and family, I knew would donate, but who nonetheless warmed my heart immensely when I saw their names scroll up my donation page with all the dollars they could give.

So, needless to say, I more than met my goal of $1800!

But none of it really seemed real until the day before the walk, when my toddler and I jumped on BART from Hayward to San Francisco to officially check in for the next morning.

Ahhhh, yes, there are those feelings of excitement and anticipation, all rushing back to me now.

The room at the St. Francis Hotel on Union Square was filled, literally, not figuratively, filled with pink.  People everywhere were lined up to sign up, or signing people up.  As Celaya and I stepped off the elevator we were inundated with pink.

I am not a fan of the color pink.

But in this case, I was exhilarated, thrilled, inspired, by the color pink.  Everyone, everywhere, seemed determined, motivated.  We all had a purpose, we all had a goal, we were a team, in this together, even if we did no more than exchange a polite smile across the room.

I stood in a very short line, filled out the crucial medical and personal information, got my bracelet, and Celaya and I headed back down to Market Street to catch BART back home.

I woke up the next morning at 5 AM, packed and ready to go.  I brought the baby monitor into my brother's room, and my husband drove me to San Francisco to meet at the Masonic Center.  We stopped on our way at Starbucks for a latte and a pastry, since I had no idea what was in store for me at the opening ceremony.  I arrived at the walk at about 6:30, and again, was greeted by a sea of pink.  There were giant moving trucks that took my sleeping bag, my overnight bag, and my pillow, to stow away and meet me later that day at the site in Larkspur, 15 miles away.  As I approached the opening ceremony, there was a woman on stage, giving her testimonial, to a crowd of hundreds of pink people.  She had survived breast cancer.  She had left her career.  She had become director of the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer!

Holding my coffee in one hand, and looking out at the sea of people, I was already moved to tears.  And I had only been there for one minute.

More people came onto the stage to share their experiences, to inspire us walkers, and inspire us they did.

And then, an announcer said something along the lines of, "alright everybody, let's go!"

And we did.

The actual walk was amazing.  We wound our way through the streets of San Francisco, seeing a lot of the tourist attractions:  Ghirardelli Square, Pier 39, The Palace of Fine Arts, the beautiful homes in the Presidio.  My girlfriend and I, along with a friend of hers, strolled the streets, chatting and stopping for coffee, taking our sweet time.

Then we got to our first rest stop, filled with awesome snack, namely the famous peanut butter and jelly graham crackers, and I realized we were behind schedule.  Way behind.

I took out the flyer with deadlines to leave each rest stop if you planned on completing the entire 26 miles of the first day, and I noticed that we were already 20 minutes behind.  At that point I began pushing, hard, to catch up.  I was determined to complete all 26 miles that day.

I felt like, first of all, it was a personal goal of mine to complete the entire 39 miles, and second of all, I had been telling all of my friends and family that I was going to complete this entire course.  I could not let myself, or them, down.  Especially after the enormous amount of support they provided to me.  So I raced.  I pushed my friends up over the Golden Gate Bridge, rushed them through the nice sandwich lunch waiting for us on the other side, and up the hill beyond, into Marin.

At that point, I realized I was being a big pain in the butt to my friends, who really were not in the same super fit shape I was in, and really were not as hyper active about completing every single mile in record time as I was.  So I waved goodbye, left them to their conversation, and from that point, became a solo walker.

I walked ten more miles alone, and it was fabulous!

I met tons of people as I passed them, they passed me, we walked a few miles together, sharing stories, family members of mine who had survived breast cancer, family members of theirs who had done the same, or sadly, had fallen victim to the disease.

I held my head high when the man taking a head count told me I was walker 360 out of almost 1,000!  I was making great time.

I stopped at each rest stop to reapply sunscreen, neatly displayed on a table, have a snack (always a pb&j graham), and refill my water bottle, which I always aimed to empty entirely before the next stop (the stops are about 3 miles apart).

At the end of the day, at a stop light, mere feet from the entrance to the site village where we would be camping for the night, one of the lovely motorcycle riders who provided the safe street crossings for us asked which of us would be continuing on the complete the full 26 miles that day, which required 3 more miles, and which would be going straight to the village.

I hesitated.  Just for a second.  But I did hesitate.

And then I raised my hand.  Yes.  I would complete the full 26 miles.

So he gave me instructions for a 3 mile loop through a residential area that would wend its way around the back of the site, and come around to the entrance from the other side of the street.  I forged through it.  Along the way, I met a brisk and brusk older woman who had been alternating walking and volunteering each year for the better part of the last ten years.  She was a middle school teacher, not fond of California's new Core Curriculum standards, by the way.  And we caught up to a husband and father of four who's family, also walkers, had raced ahead, while he decided to hang back a bit and enjoy the view.

We arrived at the village and I all but collapsed.  No.  I couldn't collapse yet.  I held my head high, legs feeling like rubber, body feeling like jelly, and walked through the giant pink arch, past the booths displaying Tiger Balm and Reebok gear.  I grabbed a folded up tent, found a volunteer "tent angel," essentially a teenager ready and willing to pitch my tiny pink, pop up tent, and laid down in the grass until the work was done.  Then I found my overnight gear, loaded it in my tent, and headed for the mobile showers.

The organizers of this walk really did think of everything.

After cleaning (scrubbing) off my tired and dirty with sweat body, I headed over to check out the booths, wandered over to the dinner tent, filled up my plate with generous portions of salad, veggies, rolls, rice, the best meatballs I've ever eaten, and a delicious piece of chocolate cake.

Bliss.

My girlfriend met up with me shortly after I finished dinner and we talked for a bit, but by that time I was so exhausted and she was so hungry, that we parted ways, I toward the tent and she toward some much needed food.

I feel asleep almost instantly and slept for 9 hours straight.  I woke up while it was still dark, packed up my gear, had some breakfast, and headed out with my girlfriend to make our way back to San Francisco.

It was not long before it was quite clear that my girlfriend had no intention of power walking the way I wanted to, so I blew her a kiss, wished her luck, and raced forward.  It was awesome.  I met a woman waiting for the walkers in Tiburon with flowers, asked me for a dance, and gave me a tiny pot of flowers.  I danced, cheek to cheek, with an older greek woman on the water for some flowers.  As I marched up one hill toward a traffic light, all by myself for the moment, I spotted a motorcycle rider waiting for me, pushing the button signaling our intent to cross.  He was, like most of his fellow volunteers, decked out in pink, standing alongside his motorcycle, also decked out in pink for the occasion.  I think the bike had a pink bra over its handlebars.  The song "I'm a Survivor" by Destiny's Child was playing on his radio, and as I approached him he began waving his arms over his head, gently swaying back and forth, like we were in a concert.  He gave me a soft, sweet smile, and lipsynced the words with me and I continued forward, toward him.  When I finally got up the hill, to him, he took off the single pink beaded bracelet he had on his wrist, looked into my eyes, and hugged me.  He walked me across the street, and I waved goodbye, all the time with that gentle smile on his lips.

I don't know his story.  I don't know who he lost.  Or if he even lost anyone.  I just know he made me feel like I was doing something powerful, something important, something meaningful.

There were dozens of others that made me feel that way on this walk.  Children holding signs with tears in their eyes.  Bearded men with leather jackets and pink bedazzled motorcycle helmets.  Older women standing by their cars as I walked along holding signs with pictures of Adam Levine and the words, "walk like I'm waiting for you at the finish line."  And a Greek lady with a tiny pot of flower and the legs of a dancer.

But the one motorcycle man at the top of the hill was the culmination of all of my experiences.  He made my tears stand out in my eyes.

At the end of the walk, my husband, my brother, and my baby were waiting on the sidewalk for me, and my tiny toddler got to walk through the final pink arch with me back at the Masonic Center amid cheers and congratulations.  It was one of the best experiences of my life.  And I realize at the end of it how much not only the money means, for research, for support, for supplies, but also how much the movement means.  How much the community comes together to raise awareness.

Now, in October, Breast Cancer Awareness month, I know I will register, I will bake cookies, I will harass my friends and family again (yes, that's you, I'm coming for you), and I will do whatever I can to continue to be a part of this movement for as long as possible.

Halloween cookies, $1 each, Christmas cookies, $10 a dozen, Valentine's cupcakes, St. Patrick's Day muffins, oh the possibilities are endless!

The Wedding. And Why I Never Write About My Sister.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down ready to begin blogging again, after barely blogging all summer.  I felt I had to explain my absence from my blog, so I did, and I vowed to begin writing again the very next day.

Speaking of vows....

I did in fact begin writing the very next day, just not on my blog.  I began writing vows.  Well, a monologue that led up to vows for a wedding.

Several months ago I got the call that my sister had gotten engaged.  Her boyfriend, high school sweetheart, of over ten years had proposed and she had said yes.

I was elated.  I had grown to love Max like a brother and called him "Uncle Max" to my daughter from the day she was born.  I was so happy for her, I congratulated her, and as the days passed, I began to wonder if I would get a maid of honor call.  Breana, Breezy for short, and I have always been close, probably the closest two people in our family, but in the last few years, as she has entered her twenties, and as we have made separate lives in distinct times of our lives, we haven't spoken as much.  Of course, when we did speak, when we saw each other for holidays or sporadic visits we always had fun together and had mostly like-minded conversations.
In the meantime, she and our sister Tammy had grown much closer as Breezy became an adult and the two no longer fought like kids do.

Breezy and I never fought.

Never.

Once, when she was about 13, she was acting like a brat and kept whipping me in the face with the sleeve of her shirt.  I got so upset I got in my car to leave town, to go home, 300 miles away.  We made up quite quickly, both in tears, and that was the end of that.  Fast forward about 12 years and we had a very similar spat, with me in my car ready to leave, a quick make up, end of story.

That, in a nutshell, is why, in all of my writing, all of my blogging, all my reflecting, I do not write about Breezy.

I write about Teno often.  He is a daily part of my life and a constant source of entertainment for me and my daughter.  He says I misquote him in my blogs.  I don't.

I write about Tammy because we really are the quintessential sisters:  three years apart, constant bickering and competing, constant comparisons and challenges.  She's my sister through and through.  I'm ready to kill her one second and kill for her in the next.  She's also a mother now, like me, and so we have much in common on that front.  She gave me my niece.  If our bond wasn't strong before, if there were any areas of weakness, Myah strengthened the bond to steel grade.  And my nephew only strengthened it further a few years later.

But Breezy is a different story.  Breezy was my baby.  When my mother had Breezy I was 10 years old and my mother's right hand.  We had a chaotic, turbulent, low income home, and my mother worked nights.  Breezy came home from the hospital and into my arms.  I rocked her to sleep while my mother worked.  I changed diapers and fed her.  I sung songs to her.  I was there when she took her first steps.  I wanted to be better for her.  At 10 I already knew I wanted to be better for her.

Of course Teno came along and I loved him just as much, but in a very different way.  My mother laid claim to Teno as her prized possession, her boy, her baby, in a way that she simply hadn't with her first three children, girls.

Breezy would respond to me when she wouldn't to anyone else.  She did what I told her to do as a child, and as an adolescent she looked to me for guidance.  She thought I was the greatest thing in the world.  And I reciprocated the feeling.

At the same time, I was dealing with my own adolescence and growth, with troubles with my parents, and I ultimately ran away from home at 15.  I remember crying, sobbing, unconsolably the day I left, because I was leaving Breezy and Teno.  My babies.

Breezy and I stayed in constant contact, phone calls, letters, I sent stamps and stationery so she could write to me, send me colored pictures.  I sent them bus tickets to come stay with me wherever I was, drove 300 miles up the coast to pick them up and bring them home with me for a week or more each summer.  I was like a divorced parent.  I made the decision to move to where they were the year Breezy entered high school because I thought I knew what a difficult time that would be for her.

I had no idea.

The high school years for Breezy represent the time when our relationship metamorphosed from maternal to sisterly.  In a silent way, with no words ever spoken, but still in no uncertain terms, she let me know that I would have to be "sister" now, that she neither needed nor wanted me to be a maternal figure any longer.

And so, control freak though I may be, I let go.  Because I had no choice.  I had to take her as she was willing to be taken.

But still, many of the decisions I made in my life I made because I was conscious of her eyes watching. The last few years of high school for Breezy I knew were leading up to a decision about college.  I couldn't very well push her to go to school when I hadn't done so myself.  So, there I was, a 27 year old freshman, pushing my way through community college, and ultimately graduating and going on to graduate school.

This is not to say that I have been perfect.  I have made horrible decisions.  I have done stupid things.  I also have not been solely driven by my love for or hopes for my sister to do what I have done that is good.  It is to say that Breezy holds such a profound place in my heart, in my soul, that I simply haven't been able to find the words to write about her.  Even now, these words fall flat for me.  The depth is just ungraspable.

Flash forward to earlier this year, and I get the call.  Well, a visit, really, from Breezy with a wine bottle, asking me to be her bridesmaid.  The moment was bittersweet.  I had hoped to be her maid of honor because of how close I felt we were, had been, for all those years.  But I was relieved that I didn't have to figure out what the hell a maid of honor was supposed to do.  Meanwhile, Tammy was the perfect choice, anxious to fulfill all the duties of which I was unaware.  Breezy made a good choice.

A week later, I get an actual call.  "Max and I were just talking about it over dinner, and decided there's nobody we'd rather have marry us than you.  Will you marry us?"

What!!???!

I think I might have actually said, "what?!"

"Well, we know that you'll say the perfect thing, that you'll come up with just the right words."

Right.  No pressure.  Talk about duties to fulfill.  Here I thought I was off the hook!

And yet, it was an even bigger honor than it would have been, for me, to be a maid of honor.  I'm a writer.  I'm an observer.  I've watched these two kids grow together, rip at each other, fall back into each other.  Laughter, light, tears, obscurity.  I've seen it, I've taken mental pictures of it, and, because of my love for Breezy, I've always accepted Max, even when I might have thought, "really?  This guy?"  I trusted her.  I believed in her.  So I had to trust and believe in him.

As the wedding raced forward all I could do was think about what I wanted to say, but I couldn't get words down.  This process is essentially how I write.  I think.  I think.  I think.  I do some dishes.  I think.  Something hits me.  I write a few words.  I walk away.  I think.  Finally, after I force an arbitrary deadline on myself, I sit down and write.  I walk away.  I come back and revise.

So while I haven't been blogging, or even actually writing my monologue, I have been "writing."

The wedding was beautiful.  It was perfect.  I really don't think I have ever seen two people more made for each other than these two, or more in love.  Friends and family came out in full support.  The sun shaded everything in gold, the branches of trees bent toward them, the leaves reached for them, the grass softened under their feet, the crickets sang for them and the flowers bloomed for them.  It was perfect.  A perfect moment in time.  I have never been a part of anything so beautiful, so profound, and yet so simple.

Beer, wine, a taco bar, a patch of grass under a tree, and a deck with some tables and chairs.

But their love colored everything.  Tiny lights twinkled and the laughter of loved ones twinkled as well.    Everyone had a drink in his or her hand but seemed simply drunk on love.  The music filled the dance floor but left the outside seating area with enough quiet to have a conversation.  The kids ran and laughed and twirled.  Even my own kid, who is extra shy in large crowds and extra anxious around groups of kids, who fell twice, got extremely overwhelmed once, and hadn't slept well in two days.  Even my two year old ultimately handled the night with grace.

I look at my toddler now and I think back to Breezy's toddler days.  Celaya wraps herself around me, parrots my speech, follows my directions in such earnest, and I think, "ah, I have been here before, more than twenty years ago, there was another little girl just like you.  Her name was Breezy."

I look at my sister now, I watched her walking down the aisle, I watched her dance with her husband, lean up for a kiss, wrap herself around him, and I think, "oh, this is what it will be like, more than twenty years from now, there will be another woman just like you, my eyes will fill with tears, my heart will fill to bursting.  Her name will be Celaya."






For those of you who are interested, who wanted to be there but couldn't, or who are interested in reading my writing, I am including below the monologue I wrote, I spoke, that took me away from blogging for so long.  Note that Breezy and Max had a heavy hand in the writing of the actual vows that they exchanged with only a few tweaks from me.

Monologue for Breezy and Max's Wedding, 9/20/14, written by Shanna Mendez-Mathews

Who gives Max to Breezy?

Who gives Breezy to Max?

<Exchange of Bride Price>

Max is placing necklaces over the necks of Breezy’s parents, Melanie and Serge, to represent the bride price that is tradition in Max’s Yurok heritage.

This exchange recognizes that Breezy is an equal in this marriage, that she brings value to her marriage, these necklaces represent what once stood for Yurok money.

The coins represent the non-Indian heritages of both families.  They show respect for the fact that their future children will be raised according to both traditions, the Indian, and the non-Indian.

This exchange establishes the position of this new family society.

What is marriage?

Historically it has been a way to continue a male line, through children, a way for women to move out of their parent’s homes and into their own home, the home of their husbands, a bargain, a negotiation, an exchange.  Only recently have we begun to talk about love as a factor in marriage.  Sure, in the past, couples have grown to love each other over the years, long after the initial exchange of vows, but today, most people wouldn’t dream of marrying someone purely for practical reasons.  Another fairly new concept is that of marrying across cultures.  Again, historically, there has been a foundation of marrying only within one’s own culture, and often with good reason.  Cultures across the world vary greatly with regard to marital expectations.  Some cultures expect a woman to be entirely subservient to her husband.  Others require a man to be the only financial provider for the household.  Some cultures call upon a man and wife to have as many children as their bodies will allow.  Others look down upon families with more than two kids.  And marrying across religions only adds further to the complexities and inevitable difficulties for a couple that agrees to be bonded for life.  So, yes, you can see why it would be very difficult to navigate the decades of an already obstacle filled journey with any added complexities. 

It seems that the most successful couples who come together from different places, culturally, or otherwise, find their success, their longevity, through embracing their differences instead of hiding from or ignoring them, by building on what similarities they find and strengthening their bonds through an appreciation of difference.  In fact, for generations, the couples that come to each other across vast expanses are the ones that catch our attention in literature.  That is what we do here today, with a couple that, while they do have much in common, does have stark differences.  One way people in general have found common ground is through music.  Which is what we do here today.  Breezy walked before us to the tune of a classical American song, My Girl.  The song not only represents one culture our bride and groom come from, the American culture; it also speaks so well to how these two see each other, and themselves.  He really does see her as his sunshine on a cloudy day, and she really wants to be that for him.  But if the song falls short of just how much she loves him, if, perhaps, it is a bit too sweet for the Max and Breezy we all now, I’ll read you a poem that I think completes this circle nicely:

You Bring Out the Mexican in Me

By Mexican American Poet Sandra Cisneros

“You bring out the Mexican in me.

The hunkered thick dark spiral.

The core of a heart howl.

The bitter bile.

The tequila lágrimas on Saturday all

Through next weekend Sunday.

You are the one I let go the other loves for,

Surrender my one-woman house.

Allow you red wine in bed,

Even with my vintage linens.

Maybe. Maybe.

For you.

Sweet twin.  My wicked other,

I am the memory that circles your bed nights,

That tugs you taut as moon tugs ocean.

I claim you all mine,

Arrogant as Manifest Destiny.

I want to rattle and rent you in two.

I want to defile you and raise hell.

I want to pull out the kitchen knives,

Dull and sharp, and whisk the air with crosses.

Me sacas lo Mexican en mí,

Like it or not, honey.

Quiero ser tuya.  Only yours.  Only you.

Quiero amarte.  Atarte.  Amarrarte.

Love the way a Mexican woman loves.  Let

Me show you.  Love the only way I know how.”

The love between these two transcends tradition.  It pulls tradition up by the roots, roughly, haphazardly, reforms it, and plants it back nicely, neatly, yet unrecognizable.  The love between Max and Breezy began sweetly, innocently, and it evolved into the chaos that is young love, it pushed its way into adulthood, maturity, with bits of darkness and loads of depth while still maintaining its elements of sweetness.

This love pulls My Girl into Sandra Cisneros into a chant from the depths of a Yurok song.   

<Rachel and Nick Sing>

This is Max and Breezy’s love.  It is a low chant in a quiet room.  A ferocious roar heard over a noisy crowd.  A twinkling laugh bubbling up from a comfortable embrace.

Their love began with a push, a giggle, and some tears.  Child’s play.  It bloomed through adolescence, through misunderstanding, through petulant mistakes and anger, through longing and desperation, through breaks and through healing. 

Breezy stood by Max, ready to defend him against even the mightiest naysayers while he figured out which road he would choose in life, stumbling at times, as we all often do. 

Max encouraged and supported Breezy as she pushed through years of college, truly at times acting as the wind beneath her wings.

Breezy sees a Max that many people in the world would look right over, look right past, and she sees him so well, in his best light, that she enables the rest of us who do not have the view, the clarity, she has, to see him as well.  She loves him so much that those of us who love her love him in the most natural, unexpected way. 

Max takes Breezy in all of her rush and bustle, all of her chaos and complexity, he provides a home for her when she feels lost and he is the light that guides her way.  His strength proves unbreachable, unbreakable, each time she crashes against him in her fury and frustration, eager to change the world and hide from it all at the same time.  He claimed her as his own one true love so profoundly and so completely at such an early age that she is simply, matter of factly, “sister” to his brothers and sisters, “daughter,” to his parents, and “auntie,” to his niece and nephew.

This love will endure because it already has.  Their love is true because it is. 

Today, now, in a time of “nothing last forever,” the bond between Max and Breezy will.  Unquestioningly, undoubtingly, with no rush, no fuss, no fear.

When I asked Max what I should say here today, what did he think was most important, he thought for a moment, evaded me, changed the subject, and ultimately, quietly, he told me this:

“We’re friends.  She’s my friend.  We accept each other.  That’s it.”

That’s it.  Simple, yet immense.  Not many people remember that when life is difficult, when pain is at its greatest, when the world crashes down around you, your husband, your wife, is your best friend, your ally. 

They understand this.  And so they will endure.

In the past, when I have asked Breezy what it was about Max that made him so great that she would spend the rest of her life with him, she said this:

“He is the man I fantasize about.  He is the man of my dreams.  Really.  While other girls love their boyfriends or husbands but dream about a man in a romance novel, or from the big screen, I love my boyfriend, and I dream about him.  He is my dream.”

And yet, so real.  Here we are today to bond the simple to the complex, the dream to the reality, the hard to the soft, knowingly all the while that both of these young lovers have elements of it all.  So really, we are witnessing the full completion of a puzzle, the fitting together of two pieces that really were created as a match long before any of our times.

Now, this is the point of the ceremony where tradition obliges me to say that if there is anyone present who has any objections to the union of this couple, please speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Max, please repeat after me:

“I Max, take you Breana, to be my wife.   

I promise to always be your closest, truest friend.

I am what I am because of you.

I will fight every day to be in every reason,

Every hope, every dream you ever have,

Every day we are together is the greatest day of my life.

With this ring, I promise, I will always be your one true love.”

You may now place the ring on her finger.

Breezy, please repeat after me:

“I Breana, take you Max, to be my husband.

I promise to always be your closest, truest friend.

I am what I am because of you.

I will fight every day to be in every reason,

Every hope, every dream you ever have,

Every day we are together is the greatest day of my life.

With this ring, I promise, I will always be your one true love.”

You may now place the ring on his finger.

By the power vested in me

I now pronounce you husband and wife.

And now, husband and wife, please seal this marriage pact with a kiss.

Summer Reflection Series: Looking Back to Move Forward

"If you have a task that you need to get done, give it to a busy person."

This quote is an entirely accurate depiction of the way my life works.  When I am busiest, with the fullest, most scheduled, brimmingest days, I get the most done.  Everything gets done.  All the housework, all the shopping, all the bill paying, all the cooking, and even all the relaxing I need.  I budget in relaxation time.  And writing time.

I suppose this busy productivity could be in part due to my school year brain.  I function on a school year calendar.  For me, the year begins in late August/ early September and ends in June.  Summer is not actually part of the year, which is why I get so little done at that time of year.  Haha, you say, you are always running around, Shanna, you say.  And it is true.  I still do a lot of running around during the summer, but it is a different class of running, it's traveling, or receiving guests, or doing summer things like going to the beach and lakes, camping.  And of course, these last three summers have included raising a rapidly growing baby girl.  It is a lot more doing, mostly with people, and a lot less reflecting, spending time alone.

For the most part, this shift in schedule and routine is fine with me.  Since I have been out of the corporate rat race and into education, summers have been naturally slower for me.  I have embraced the academic year schedule.  I have more time at home during the summer, which means more quality time with family and friends.  Yea, we killed an entire series of Breaking Bad and have made good headway on Mad Men.  Quality.  Catch up time, enjoying the lull.

But my writing suffers.  Just today I mentioned to a friend that I was thinking of a blog post, and she said, with a smile, "you're blogging again?!"

Ha!  I knew I hadn't blogged in a while.  And I have found myself in the last few weeks anxiously looking forward to the beginning of the school year, for my work schedule to change, which gives me hours alone in the evening, and for my writing to pick back up.

So here I sit, on the first day back on my new work schedule, after school tutoring for English and History students, ready to write.

Only, I've got at least ten idea for essays that are crowding around in my head, and I barely know where to begin.

So much has happened this summer, and I have so much to say about all of it.  Do I begin in order of priority, level of importance to me, chronologically, most relevant?

I looked back at the last time I blogged, and it has been almost two months.  In that time, I have fundraised, blogged about, and completed the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, spent some quality time with my mother when she came to stay for a week, walked downstairs to see the new car my husband bought and brought home as a surprise for me and Celaya, traveled to Southern California alone with my daughter to visit family, rediscovered my grandmother and her rock star status as she visited us here in our home for a week, cuddled and snuggled and laughed with my niece and nephew, sister, and brother in law when they visited for a weekend, a weekend that had us in the car for a total of 9 hours, at least, exploring different parts of the bay area.  My daughter and I established our first mother/daughter play date relationship with a wonderful mother and daughter we met at the park.  My skin turned against me and decided that I am now allergic to the sun, heat, wool, hot water, long drives, anxiety, stress, you name it.

Add to major events of the summer the smaller, but no less meaningful ones, date nights with my hubby, date nights with my baby brother (yep, 23, still my baby brother), park visits with my actual baby, small strides made at work, inspiration from friends, old connections rekindled.  It goes on and on.

To begin then, I think I will in fact work chronologically.  Well, first I will drink this glass of wine, Unruly Red, with a whole orange peeled and cut up into it, for those interested.  Then, I will sit on the couch, all alone, maybe catch up on some Bill Maher, have some greek yogurt, and enjoy the solitude.

Oh, yea, I forgot to add a hefty reading list to my summer adventures.  I am just finishing Gabriel Garcia Marquez' gigantic work of art.  I definitely have a new appreciation for solitude.

And starting tomorrow I will begin this Summer Reflection Series, chronologically, most logically, so that I may begin to once again reflect on the day to day.

I'm back!

Anxiety: Camping with a Toddler

I was so stressed out by the time I got home from camping for Independence Day that I had a rash up and down my body, my heart felt like it was pulsing to the beat of a nonstop techno club song, and my mind was full of "stress boxes."

Stress boxes are what form in my mind when I take too long to relieve my anxiety.  What if she gets a mosquito bite?  What if she's allergic to mosquitos?  Oh, great.  Poison Oak is abundant?  What if we go home and she is riddled with Poison Oak?  Look at her skin!  It's red and rashy!  What could that be?  Why is her skin so sensitive?  She needs a shower.  I'll give her a shower.  Ugh!  It's way past her bedtime!  Why won't she go to sleep?  I have barely talked to my husband this whole time.  My sunscreen is clearly not working.  It's eleven o'clock and we still haven't eaten breakfast.  It's too hot in this tent for Celaya to nap.  Great.  What if she gets overheated during her nap in this heat and never wakes up?  What am I going to cook when we get home?  Why did that Hertz representative add all of this insurance coverage to my rental when we clearly said "no"?  Great.  Now I have to chase a manager down.  Do I have fruit for breakfast?  Is this guacamole bad?  Why can't I sleep now that I'm finally home in my own comfortable bed?  Why is the neighbor screaming?  It's two AM!

And those stress boxes build and build and crowd out my brain until I am gritting my teeth at every little thing that pushes my buttons.  Monday morning, Celaya wants to run barefoot from elevator to our apartment.  Sure, honey.  I take off her shoes and socks so she can run barefoot.

"Mama to run barefoot."

"Sure, honey."  I take off my flip flops.  "But you're going to have to carry Mama's sandals because I have three grocery bags from Trader Joe's and a diaper bag loaded with a gallon of milk."

"Mama to carry them."

*Grit teeth!*

Calmly:  "Celaya, if you want Mama to walk barefoot with you, you will have to carry my sandals, or I will have to put them back on.  I cannot carry them too."

Yea, of course, she shrugs, picks up the sandals, and runs happily home, singing a Winnie the Pooh song.

Meanwhile, my blood is boiling and I am desperate for her nap.

For no reason.

Nothing went wrong.  Nothing went even close to wrong.  We had a wonderful weekend.  It should have been a very relaxing, invigorating weekend for me.  I should have jogged new trails.  I should have swum with the fish in the river.  I should have let my kid stay up a bit later.  I should have had a few more glasses of wine.

But I didn't.  I was a ball of anxiety.  I convinced myself I didn't have time to jog (jogging is a huge anxiety reliever for me). I resented my husband for not reading my mind.  I merely went through the motions each day hoping that disaster would not befall us.  And in the end, I realize the only thing that kept me sane.  The only thing that kept me from falling apart completely and freaking out.  The only thing that made me realize that only solution to this irrational stress is to camp more.

My sister.

There were my niece and nephew, dirty by day, rinsed clean by the river at night.  Munching on whatever snacks were handy.  Loud, falling down, wild, crazy, smiling, giggling, whining, complaining, crying, frolicking.

Kids.

And my sister, picking up a fallen child, wiping a too dirty face, handing over a hot dog or some cheerios, sending a too-whiny kid off for some alone time in the tent.

Chill.

My sister as a mom is the picture of chill.

My sister has miraculously figured out exactly what works for her, and she does it, with no apologies, no anxiety, and no fear.

No fear.

Would I trade places with her?

No.

I'm a happy big city liberal by nature.  I will still shower my kid (because of her sensitive skin).  I will still only let her eat Doritos in a small bowl (and only one time during the weekend - hey be happy she gets Doritos!)  I will still put her down to sleep in the tent long before I go to bed (I need my adult time).

No, I do not envy my sister her life.

But I acknowledge freely that I have a few things to learn from her.  I really enjoy spending time with my sister because she is one of the few mothers out there that is so different from me that I still consider, with no exceptions, a good mom.

I also think she is a good person.  And again, we are so different that the contrast is like night and day.  But I have matured enough, I think, and we grew up close enough, that when she talks, later in the evening, around the campfire, with her Corona in her hand, my cheap plastic cup of expensive red wine in mine, just me and her, I listen.

I care what she has to say.  I try to see things from her perspective.  I learn things I may otherwise simply ignore.

Who would have thought that from a weekend of anxiety filled camping I would come away not only knowing I need to camp again (we are currently planning at least one more camping trip before the fall sets in) but also that I would learn the lessons I learn from my sister's mere state of being?

Who would have thought that after years of childhood fights, battles, pushing and pulling, kicking and screaming, after countless arguments, disagreements about politics, morality, judgment, after turning our backs, walking away, making up, fighting again, that less than a week after spending time with my little sister, the once upon a time biggest pain in the butt in the world, I would be thinking, when can we get together again?

Soon, I hope.

Toddlers in Rainbow Tiaras at Gay Pride

Yea.  I took my two year old to San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade this last Sunday.

It's funny; I didn't even think twice about it until people responded with such shocked expressions.  Not shocked as in disgusted, just shocked as in "wow!  really?! I'm not sure what to say next."

I did not even realize the parade was coming up until I invited my friend to dinner Sunday night and he told me he would be at Pride.

"Oh, cool.  We'll probably take Celaya this year."  That's what I thought.  And that's what we did.

We woke up, we had breakfast, we packed up some light gear, and we took BART from Hayward to San Francisco.  We arrived around 10:15 AM with the parade schedule to kick off at 10:30.  We got off at Embarcadero, the first San Francisco stop, because we wanted to wander from one end of the parade toward the other until we decided to head home.  We left around 1:00 P.M. when all the party people had begun arriving and lighting up their joints in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.  When it was obvious that things were about to take a turn for the drunken and stoned, we took our cue that family time was over.  It was time to leave.

And that's what we did.

It was all very matter of fact for us.  We told Celaya we were going to the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco.  And I have to admit, it was very cute to hear her say, "Gay Pride Parade" in her nasal little voice.  I explained to her that sometimes boys marry boys and girls marry girls, and we were going to celebrate those differences.  I told her the parade was about love.  About acceptance.  We had long conversations about Gay Pride all day long.

And for two days now my daughter has been talking about the BART train.

What did I expect?  A highly evolved conversation with a two year old on civil rights and equality?

Not exactly.

This morning:  "The speaker says, 'your train is coming soon,' and we don't go on other people's trains, and don't go past the bumps because the train goes 'VROOM!'"

Yep.  Boys love boys.  Girls love girls.  And my daughter loves BART.

She did enjoy the parade of balloon people and giant balloons that clapped their hands.  She danced to the fun music as giant speakers rolled by.  She completely missed the enormous, fully erect penis that walked right past her father while she was on his shoulders.  Her father did not miss it, however.

He freaked out a little.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful celebration of love, of happiness, and of difference.

Difference.

This lesson is one I struggle to get across to Celaya on a daily basis.  Celebrate difference.  We examine different leaves, different bugs, different flowers, different cars, different body parts, different body parts on different genders:  "boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina," she is quite fond of repeating.

Yes, Kindergarden Cop, they do.

We do also recognize different ages, sizes, "baby is small.  Mama is large."  Hey, hey, slow down there with all that "large" talk, kid.

We talk about countries and regions, Papa is from Mexico, one of her books is set somewhere in Africa.

And yes, we talk about color and sexual orientation.

Celaya has very brown skin.  Many of the other children and parents at the playground when we are there have very white skin.  Our friends and family also range from very dark brown to very white.  Her dolls range the color and ethnic spectrum.  Her dolls kiss.  Her animals kiss.  Her cups kiss.  Everybody and thing in our house kisses and hugs.  All the time.

So I take every opportunity I can to have discussions centered around celebrating difference.

Because we don't live in a world yet like the one Martin Luther King, Jr. foresaw when he said,

"One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand.
Children from India will ask:
What is hunger?
Children from Alabama will ask:
What is racial segregation?
Children from Hiroshima will ask:
What is the atomic bomb?
Children at school will ask:
What is war?

You will answer them.
You will tell them:

Those words are not used anymore,
Like stage-coaches, galleys, or slavery.

Words no longer meaningful.

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries."

I long for that day.  I live for that day.  And I prepare my child to live for that day.

But I also prepare her to fight for it.  Because she will not grow up in it.
Children still go hungry.
Children are still segregated.
The atomic bomb still has lasting effects.
We are still at war.
Racism is alive and thriving.
And hate crimes are still a daily occurrence.

So my child will have to reach across the aisle.  To work to not be consumed by ignorance.  She will have to work to make a difference in the name of difference.

I will continue to teach her about ladybugs and saw bugs, about pine needles and oak leaves.

I will continue to teach her about black skin and white skin.  About homosexuality and heterosexuality, and that there is much that comes in between.

I will also teach her about the effects of black skin and white skin on society, and of society on those skins.  About the fight for equality that the LGBT movement has carried on for decades, and that still needs to carried on.  If I want change in the world, I begin with me, which means I continue with my daughter.  She must be a warrior for change.  What is the alternative?

So, yes, I will take her to pride parades.  I will take her to inner city parks and neighborhoods.  I will not flee my urban area for the suburbs.  And I will not think twice about it.

I will teach her to recognize difference, and to find the beauty therein, and then, hopefully, to reveal that beauty to others.

Beautifully Broken

What does that even mean?

I have been broken so many times in so many ways, by so many people that I have loved and trusted.  I do not look back on the breaking and think it was beautiful.  I certainly didn't think it was a beautiful breaking at the time.

I am patched back together broken.  In some ways I will never fully heal.  The scars are deep.  And yes, I have a horrible tendency to lash out viciously when my scars get grazed, or even glanced.

But I do not think this brokenness is beautiful.  Or anything to be proud of.  I do not bear my scars with pride.

The first time I heard this expression, "beautifully broken," was in a song by Government Mule.  The lead singer sings in a low voice about seeing "the way she plays her man," and that he knows he's "got to know her name."  He goes on, through whiskey tinted lyrics, to note that "she's so dangerously twisted, shaped by the wind."  He wants to know why he lies to himself, "pretend that I can break her, when she's already been so beautifully broken."

I know this woman.  In an alternate reality, I am this woman.  Hurting men because she's been so badly hurt.  Hardening to the world of love, using sex as a tool, never opening up to anyone, feeling dark and alone and, yes, dangerous.  I was well on my way there when I met Carlos.  She haunts me.

In one of our few intense fights, which means I used words like knives to cut at my husband, Carlos asked me, calmly, incredulously, "why do you hate men so much?  Who hurt you so bad?"  Hmmm... Where do I begin?

But no, that is not where I want to go here.  The point is that in those moments, there are always two Shannas.  There is the one that says, "fuck off," walks out of the room, the house, gets into the car, finds a bar, finds a new guy, finds a way to close off, close down, shut out.

And there is the Shanna that asks herself what makes someone think that about me, especially someone who knows me so well, and knows that I love him.

Do I hate men?

No.

But that other Shanna surely does.

And I have to acknowledge the path not taken.  I have to recognize that there are myriad choices I made and did not make that got me here, to this point, a healthier place emotionally and psychologically, but that the perpetually broken path is the slippery one I can always slip back onto.

It is not beautiful.  It is dark.  It is lonely.  It is constantly painful.  It is a path I nod at when it beckons me, and I look at my husband, I look at my darling daughter, who has no reason to hate men, and I look in the mirror.  I do not want to be Miss Havisham.

I get that men find that unavailability attractive, in the same way so many women drool over the "bad boy" who always hurts them because they too are closed off and empty inside from selling away their souls piece by broken piece.  Darkness is tempting, it is alluring, it beckons.

What I do not understand is women want to be known as beautifully broken.

I googled the term after a coworker yesterday told me that her sister has a tattoo across her lower back that bears that insignia, "beautifully broken."

First of all, I do not think you are supposed to refer to yourself that way.  I think it only works when someone else uses it to describe you.

Second of all, apparently Ashlee Simpson, the incredibly vapid pop singer has a song with the same title.  So, scratch my first of all; I guess it is okay now to refer to yourself that way.

What is the appeal then?  I am broken, but I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or I am so broken that I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or better yet, I am broken in such a beautiful way; oh yea, and please fix me?

Or use me?  Or break me some more?

For me, it connects quite cleanly with the Marilyn Monroe quote women are so fond of adopting:

"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure.  I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle.  But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Marilyn Monroe was an asshole.  She could not stay in a relationship.  She slept with the president of the United States, and his brother, behind their wives backs.  She was selfish, needy, thoughtless, and moronic.  And hot.  Ergo beautifully broken?

There is a great blog about this mentality on Huffpost that I read months ago.  It really struck home.  The basic point:  If I can't handle you at your worst then maybe you should stop being so horrible.

Being broken is not a license to be an asshole.  My past hurts do not give me the right to go around hurting everyone else.  Intentionally!

When I hurt my husband through my own pain, when I nip and bite at him because of my own twisted psyche, I do not say, or even think, "yea, well, deal with it.  You're lucky to have me."

I apologize.  I am ashamed.  And I hope one day that I don't push him too far.  Right out of my life.  So I work on healing, on making better choices, on (wait for it) thinking before I speak or act.

How about this:  break the cycle.  Do not aim to scratch and bleed out the same scars on someone else that have been etched into the timeline of your skin.

To be clear.  I am proud that I survived.  I am not ashamed of my scars.  But I do not claim to be beautifully broken.  There is no dignity in that calling card.  Marilyn was wounded.  Open, bleeding, weeping, seeping, wounded.  She killed herself.  She was a living, breathing, dying, tragedy.

I want to be a success story.  I want to continue to heal.

I want the other Shanna to move further and further away, for our paths to diverge so widely that mountains and rivers would have to be traversed for me to become her again.

No, don't call me beautifully broken.  That woman moves "from star to star."  She "casts her spell.  It's like drowning in moonlight..."

Rather, call me hauntingly healed.

Lose 15 Pounds in 15 Weeks!

Okay, actually it's 14 pounds in 16 weeks, but let's be honest, this title sounds better.  I'm a writer; what do you expect?

I keep seeing these ads scroll up my Facebook page and hearing about celebrities that lose weight for a part (and wow! they lose it so fast!) and listening to friends and family members talk about losing weight for the summer.

Here's my disclaimer:  I have never tried actually dieting as a verb.

If you're looking for a "diet" plan, you've come to the wrong place.

If you're interested in how I began the move toward a healthy lifestyle and a healthier weight, please read on.

I have always been active.  Thank the gods for that because if that were not the case, I easily would have ballooned well up over 200 pounds and into the 250 range considering my past relationship with food.

I did not love food.  I abused it.  As a teenager and a young woman in my twenties I would have seconds for dinner on a regular basis and then polish off a bowl of ice cream or a piece of cake.  As I got further into my twenties, this lifestyle caught up to me; my metabolism slowed down and my weight went up.  But because of my build, I tend to gain weight everywhere gradually, I convinced myself that I was, as Winnie the Pooh says, "short, fat, and proud of that."

I have never really had body issues.  I never thin shamed people, or fat shamed people.  I have never really been "unhappy" with my weight.  I simply always knew I was heavier than it was healthy to be for my height, and I simply ate my way around that knowledge.  I never looked for a way to lose weight fast.  But I have tried different life long approaches to food when I have been able to acknowledge my sick relationship with food.

Once, right before moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area from Humboldt County (an area quite proud of its large, well cushioned women) I tried out the Atkins Diet, thinking I could make that a lifestyle change.  I read Dr. Atkins book.  He convinced me that high fat, lots of meat, no carbs was the way to go, for life.  I lived that way for about a year.  It did help me drop from pushing 200 pounds down closer to the 150 range.  And I loved the lifestyle!  I exercised, walking on a daily basis.  I ate salami and cream cheese for breakfast.  I drank lots of water.

And I smelled bad.

There's something about the high meat diet that releases ketones from your system, and you always smell like a warm ham sandwich.  Without the bread of course.

Not sexy.

Then one day I walked into Whole Foods and asked an associate where I could find the Atkins bars I was so dependent on to get me through the day.  The nice girl kindly explained to me that Atkins bars were not made from whole food.  They were loaded with processed, synthesized gods-know-what, so Whole Foods did not carry them.

I realized then that what I was doing to my body was fundamentally unhealthy, and more than losing weight what I was looking for was living healthily.

A few years later I was trying to get pregnant and not having much success.  I was about 40 pounds overweight BMI-wise, and I kept reading that weight could be an issue.  This time I was going to lose weight the healthy way, and keep it off.

I joined Weight Watchers and lost the weight.  They teach the basics that every person should know.  Eat fewer calories.  Make most of your calories come from plants, grains, and lean meats.  Exercise regularly.

At 32 I was in the best shape of my life and I felt great.  I smelled great too!

It worked.

Then I got pregnant.  And relapsed.  I ate all the Jack in the Box, all the Taco Bell, all the Coldstone, all the chips and dips and fries and fritters I could get my hands on.

I gained 75 pounds.  I tipped the scale the day I gave birth at 213 pounds.  I'm 5'2".

My baby came out looking like a swollen, sumo wrestling panda.

After Celaya was born I wanted so desperately to breast feed successfully for a year that I didn't bother to even think about trying to take the weight off.  I lost 45 pounds in the first months after she was born and then hovered for two years at about 165.

As her second birthday approached I realized that I was not modeling the life I wanted her to live.  Sure, we ate healthy.  I walked every day.  But I was still eating way more than I needed (going to bed stuffed at night most nights) and my "walking" was usually down to the park two blocks away.

Armed with what I had learned at Weight Watchers, but knowing that I had no time or patience for calculating the points of every bite or step I took, I slowly moved our entire household toward a healthier food and exercise lifestyle.

And here I sit.  Down from 166.4 to 152.4 in 16 weeks.  I get on the scale every Monday to check in with myself and write the number on a pad on my fridge.  I know that the number is arbitrary.  I know that 152 for me is different than 152 for someone else.  I know that muscle is denser than fat.  I know that the fit of my clothes and the energy I now have to climb the five flights of stairs to my apartment is a far better measure of success than the number change on a scale.  I know all this.  I also know that scientifically, medically, being dramatically overweight, or obese, is detrimental to my health.  I know that more children are born diabetic (mine could have been one of them). I know that more children get diabetes at a younger age.  I know that an increasing number of people in the world, and particularly this country, is getting fatter and fatter in a really unhealthy way.

I know that I do not want my child to be one of those people.  I want her relationship to food and exercise to be about fuel and energy, about love and life.  And treats!

Here's what I've come up with:

Fruit should be the regular sweet in life.

Sugar should be a treat, i.e. let's go get an ice cream!

Vegetables should be a constant, at every meal.

Fat should be a condiment, not the main course.

Whole grains and nuts should be daily staples.

Exercise should be an every day matter of life.  Whatever it is you love to do physically, do that an hour a day most days of the week, on average.  For example, my brother golfs a couple times a week, which takes three to four hours at a time, so there's his average.

And enjoy food, do not abuse it.

Those are the rules I have lived by for the last four months.  And I feel truly healthy down to my bones.  And I am having a love affair (as opposed to an abusive relationship) with food and drink.  I drink wine every night I'm home, but only two glasses.  I have dark chocolate (85% cocoa dark) and greek yogurt for dessert every single night.  I eat grains and protein for breakfast every morning (dry honey wheat toast and a fried egg and grapes, or almond butter on bread with an apple, or oatmeal with slivered almonds and a banana).  I have a salad for lunch every day, a delicious, sinful salad with spinach and avocado and black olives and tomatoes and cucumbers and anything else I happen to feel like throwing in their that is a plant with an awesome full fat red wine vinegar and olive oil dressing from Trader Joe's.  And for dinner I eat whatever we have that night.  My husband cooks one night (usually Mexican), my brother cooks one night (usually something with sauce or gravy) and I cook four nights (it varies from Mexican to American to Italian, to Greek, to Chinese).  Nothing is off limits.  We eat beef one night, pork one night, we eat a vegetarian meal one night, and chicken, turkey, or fish the other nights.  I always use real butter, olive oil, canola oil.  I put bacon in my refried beans.  I put full fat sour cream on my fajitas. We eat a lot of cheese.  A lot!  The big trick for me is variety.  I don't make two heavy meals two nights in a row.  The heavier the meal, i.e. beef stroganoff, the smaller portion I eat.  And I try never to eat until I'm stuffed.  I stop when I'm satisfied, reminding myself that I still want to drink one more glass of wine, and that I've got dark chocolate and greek yogurt waiting for me around the corner.

I also run 5 miles a day 5 days a week.  Because of that level of intensity, I never feel bad for a heavy meal, I never worry about counting points or calories, and I never question how quickly or slowly I'm losing weight.

To be clear, if you do not want to exercise that much, and I understand some people consider themselves allergic to strenuous physical exertion, you must eat less.  As my mother said to me yesterday morning, "You and Breezy [my sister] run 5 miles so you can enjoy your food, Tammy [my other sister] and I watch carefully what we eat and eat way less so we can enjoy not exercising."

This way works for me because I do love food, but I also love running.  I am by nature an anxious person and running helps me control my anxiety quite a bit as well.

I plan to live this way for the rest of my life.  If it takes me another 16 weeks to lose the last 14 pounds to get me into a healthy BMI, fine.  If my body decides this is my new set weight, fine.

I feel healthy.  And my daughter sees me living a healthy life.  I'm happy to move forward this way with very few changes.

Though I will likely need a double jogging stroller at some point.

A Love Letter to the Best Father I Know

I sat last night thinking about what I wanted to say today.  I sit here now typing words, knowing that there is no chance I will find the right ones.  Still, I have to try.

There are no words.  There are in-between words.  There are smiles.  There are laughs.  There are sighs and shrugs and head shakes and winces.  There is a welling up of emotion.  There is, of course, because it's me, a chilling sense of foreboding if the unthinkable were to happen.  But the words do not exist, have not been invented to describe, to express, to reveal the type of father my husband is to my daughter.

I knew it from the moment we started talking about children.  He wanted so badly to be a great father, the kind he never had, the kind I never had, the kind neither of us had ever really seen.

My dad and my stepdad, I can truly say at this point in my life, did the best they could with what they were given.  They were never evil, never absentee, never "bad" fathers.  They were young and stupid when they had kids, and made the best of the chaos of parenthood.

We were not young, and a little less stupid, when we decided to have Celaya, and two years later, when we finally had her, we were even less young, and hopefully even less stupid.

My husband works at being a father.  He tries to teach her letters and numbers, colors and shapes.  He plays in the sand and the dirt.  He makes the dinosaurs attack the village and throws balls around (usually avoiding breaking things).  He dances with my daughter, and he even dances with her giant panda bear when she insists.  He plays with her and snuggles her and dreams big dreams for her.

And that's just the fun stuff.  Three nights a week my daughter's father comes home from work and usually doesn't even have a chance to change out of his work clothes until after he puts her to bed hours later.  He engages with her as she leaps into his arms.  He feeds her, bathes her, reads her stories, rocks her gently and sings her songs when she implores him to "snuggle for a minute," and he puts her to bed.  He is as much a father as I am a mother.  And even today in this progressive society of equality between men and women, I think that is rare.

Sure, he makes mistakes.

He almost drowned her in her own breast milk once.

I was at work, he was feeding her a bottle of breast milk, and, to clear her nasal passages that were stuffed up from a cold, he gave her a dropper of breast milk in her nose, as we had been doing for a few days.  Except he couldn't find the usual tiny dropper we had been using, so he improvised with a dropper easily five times as large.

You can imagine the rest.

In many ways he is a typical dad.

I come home from working all day on Saturdays to find Celaya in an orange top, lime green leggings, purple socks, an off center top ponytail, two crooked ponytails in the back, or just her crazy hair free flying around a dirty face, with paint on her toes and paint on my walls.  Toys are everywhere, the music is too loud, and the kitchen is a mess, because, "man, she's a lot of work!"

And that's what keeps me from wondering if this is all just a dream, too good to be true, too perfect to be real.

Nope.  It's real.  My husband's old hiking backpack stocked (by him) and ready (just in case they decide to take off somewhere) with diapers, wipes, a few toys, a bag of fruit snacks, and an extra outfit is there to prove it.

I love him more now as the father of my daughter than I ever did as merely the man I fell in love with and chose to spend the rest of my life with.

I love him because I truly believe he strives to be a better husband to me because he know his daughter will grow up to choose a man like her father, and he wants her treated the way he treats me.

I love him because he will fight for her in a way I would never think to.

I love him because he will teach her things I would never be able to.

I love him because he is the knight who will slay her dragons.  He is the warrior who will battle her demons.  He is the astronaut who will help her reach the stars.  He is the light that will chase away the dark for her.  He is.  He is.  He is.

And finally, and most importantly, I love him so much, as much as I do, because I see how much she loves him, and just how much she does.  He has become such an irreplaceable part of my world because he is such an irreplaceable part of hers.

Every Day Most Certainly Is Not Mother's Day

Every day is kids' day.  Every day is husbands' day.  Every day is a work day.  Every day is definitely not Mother's Day.

I read a very nice Facebook post by Isabel Allende, a favorite author of mine, that began that way:  "Let's remember that every day is Mother's Day."

It was a lovely sentiment.  I understand what she was saying:  in short, every day should be Mother's Day.  We should recognize the hard work mothers do every day.

Yes, we should.

On my way home from work yesterday I listened to an interview on KQED Forum with author Sandra Tsing Loh about her menopausal breakdown at the age of 46.  She cited studies that show the most depressed group of people in America is mothers raising children.  She noted that we try to do it all.  Apparently full time working mothers today spend more time with their children than stay at home mothers did in the 1950s.

We are working hard to engage.  Did I read enough books to my child?  Is she getting too many GMOs?  Too many non organic foods?  Too much sugar?  Should I home school?  Private school?

And mine is only 2!  I can only imagine what will be keeping me up at night in ten years.

Add to that the anxieties I have as a wife.

Then add to that the anxieties I have about myself.

I lay in bed the other night almost on the verge of tears wondering what Celaya would do if I died.  Nobody will ever love her the way I do.  She would be that poor girl that everyone feels sorry for, and they would all tell her how much her mother loved her, if only she could have grown up knowing her mother.

Why am I dying?  What am I dying of?

I have no idea!

But it could happen.

It happens.

Right?

Yes.  Every single day is something new.  A new anxiety.  A new hurdle to jump.  A new task to incorporate into my ever growing pile of things to do each day.  And I must get them all done.  I must, or I won't be a good mother.

And because, for the most part, I do think I am a good mother, I planned and prepared for one day of spoiling, free of anxiety, free of stress, just eating, shopping, pampering.

I had a wonderful Mother's Day today.  I woke up to hot coffee and a happy baby.  I enjoyed a nice long run.  I enjoyed my brunch on fancy Santana Row, and shopping along the boulevard and across the street at the Westfield Shopping center.  As I strolled around the mall with the Starbucks coffee my husband stood in line for 20 minutes to buy for me, I reflected on how blessed I am to have so much love and to have come to such a satisfying place in my life.  We have been pondering the idea of having another baby lately, and I was thinking how well that happy event would fit into our lives.

And for once, the mountainous rock of doubt and what if did not loom large above my head.  I am only realizing now that I did not once think about all that could go wrong.  My child could get Leukemia, my next baby could have Down's Syndrome (because I am sooo old).  My happy marriage could fall apart.  My boss could decide he hates me and fire me.

Oh, see?  There.  I'm doing it again.

I don't know what a good mother is.  My sister called me a role model today.  And I laugh to myself and think, "ha, she has no idea I laid on the bathroom floor last night for fifteen minutes feeling hurt and angry and ignoring my precious daughter whom I have been away from all day."  Why?  Over a petty argument with my adoring husband.  Crazy.

My mother has been crazy for as long as I can remember.  I love her dearly. But she is in all honesty crazy.

In fact, all the women that have been mother figures to me in my life have a little bit of crazy in them.

I suppose that, in the end, mothering is like anything else in life.  I take what I want to do, what I do not want to do, and put that together with what I admire about what the mothers who came before me did and the what the mothers alongside me are doing.  I do my best to avoid doing what I do not agree with (while at the same time reserving judgment in recognition of the fact that I may have to eat my words someday), and I work at it, every day.  I work at it, and I do not get discouraged when my kid throws milk at me, pitches a fit in the grocery store, refuses to eat her vegetables, scatters marbles and tiny dinosaurs from one end of the house to the other, or any other insanity that is entirely age appropriate.

"She's crazy,"  I tell myself.

And someday, if I do everything exactly right, with only a few tiny missteps, if I struggle, and work, and love, and laugh, if I focus, and protect, and encourage, and embrace, if I get through the child rearing, adolescence enduring part of this journey called motherhood with an A+ on my scorecard, I just might be lucky enough to have my happy, well balanced, fully grown daughter say, shaking her head,

"My mom's crazy."

Walking For Others' Lives

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That's what we're told right?

But it's the thought that counts.

No.  Not really.  No it isn't.

If you could have done better, could have put in more effort, intended to do more, but you didn't, so you just grabbed something really quick for that friend's birthday party, gave your $1 at Safeway to end childhood hunger, and then went home and felt better about yourself, you're going to hell.

Just kidding.

I actually don't believe in hell, not the red devil with a pitchfork in eternal flames hell, anyway.

I do believe that heaven and hell are here.  Children are molested.  Women are raped.  Innocent, good people are murdered in the streets completely randomly.  Every day.  Meanwhile, children are born into lives of privilege, never knowing suffering.  Women go to good colleges and become top executives or doctors with proud middle class families.  And innocent, and not so innocent people live out their lives without harm or pain coming to them, ever.

I do believe that it is the job of those who either have never known suffering or who have survived suffering and come out of it to help those still suffering.

I come from the latter category.  I have lived a life painted in both bleak and bright colors, in both vibrant reds and violent ones.  During some periods of my life I suffered greatly and, turning to my left and my right, only saw others who suffered alongside me.  There seemed to be no end.  There seemed to be no help.

But I got up each day, I worked through my darkness, and others did come along who were able to help push me up and out of a dark cave.  

Now, having survived, having found a firm footing, I have wondered what I can do to turn around, reach down, and lift others up.  I have wanted the cause I fight for to be a personal one.  Abused children?  Maybe.  Abused women?  Perhaps.  Uneducated people looking for a chance at education.  Definitely, and I made that my career choice.

In terms of volunteer work though, something to which I could purely give, without asking anything in return, nothing had spoken to me.  Honestly, I did not look as hard as I could have.

Then a friend at work happened to ask me if I wanted to do the Avon walk for breast cancer with her.  And a light came on.

This could be the beginning of volunteer and charity work for me, I thought.  I can do this.  I can fight for this.  This is real to me.

Breast cancer, and cancer in general, has been a constant in my life.  When I was still a teenager my grandmother had a breast removed because of breast cancer.   Around the same time, I myself had to have a benign lump removed.  My mother has been through two bouts of cancer.  An aunt is now recovering from a double mastectomy.  Yes, breast cancer was something I could take on with an open heart and a fighting spirit.

Why Avon and not Susan G. Komen?

Avon is another constant for me.  It rang true when my friend spoke its name.  My mother discovered Avon sales and depended on the profits from those sales while she was recovering from cancer surgeries and chemotherapy.  Avon felt right.

I also had only just begun to run five miles daily again (after taking more than two years off to have a baby)  when my friend asked.  Running and walking have also been constants in my life.  They are my favorite forms of exercise.  Yes.  Yes, I could do this.

And so I will.  I run daily for my life and my health.  In three months I will walk for the lives of others. I have already received the support from those closest to me and received financial commitments from many others.  I have never fundraised before, and the idea of harassing people for money is terrifying to me.  But the idea of actually accomplishing my goal, $1800 by July 11 in order to be able to participate in the 40 mile walk, is exhilarating.

So I make the calls.  I send the messages.  I train daily.  I face my fear.

I have been described in the past as not very outwardly empathetic.  I do not deal with others' pain well emotively.  I do not know how to sit with someone while they cry, while they suffer.  I am bad at commiserating over hurts and harms.  I tend to address my own painful past very matter of factly, and as a result I address the pains of others in the same way.  What can we do?  How can I help?  What do you need?  Let's act.  Let's do.  Let's get up and go.  Oh, you just want me to sit and listen?  To offer kind words.  Ugh.  I'm horrible at that.

But I can walk.  I can raise funds.  I can spread the word.  I can fight.

I am great at fighting.

Running For My Life

I run four days a week, sometimes five, five miles a day.  I walk or hike one or two days a week.  I take one day off.  Saturday.  Because I leave home for work at 7 AM and get home at 6 PM.  And I'm freaking tired.

I run for my life.  I was in the best shape of my over thirty years of life when I got pregnant with Celaya.  I was running five days a week, five miles a day, and biking or hiking on the weekends with my husband.  I felt awesome.  I got pregnant.  After two years of trying.  Two years of being overweight, generally nonchalant about intentional, regular exercise, and making excuses about why when,  I finally changed it all about six months before I got pregnant. I buckled down and took a healthy (Weight Watchers) approach to eating and exercising.  My body had been unhealthy.  My health had been out of balance.  I had an unhealthy relationship with food, and an unhealthy relationship with exercise.  It took a long time to retrain my brain.

Case in point,
Tonight when I got home:
"How many enchiladas do you want, Shanna."
"One."
"One!?"
"Yea.  One.  I'm having beans and broccoli, too.  I had a half a cheeseburger, french fries, and half an ice cream cone last night.  I don't need a plate full of enchiladas tonight."
"Ohhhhhh!  You had half a cheeseburger twenty four hours ago, so you can only have one enchilada tonight?"

Just a few months ago I would have eaten the whole damn cheeseburger, all the fries, the whole ice cream cone, the bagel I had for breakfast at work, two slices of pizza I had for lunch today (I probably would have added a sparkling juice and a cookie), and still had two enchiladas, twice the beans, none of the broccoli, and two or three glasses of wine tonight.  Because I have lived a life of eating until I'm more than full.

I would walk a lot.  I have always been active, walk, bike, swim, hike, but never intentionally, aggressively, purposefully, for my life.  I have simply always enjoyed being active.  But never active enough to counteract all my eating.

I really should have gone into competitive eating.

Instead, I realized I have always eaten way too much.  I haven't necessarily been eating the wrong things.  I have always loved fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains.  But I have also always eaten at least double portions, and added all the ice cream, pastries, sour gummy bears, and the occasional fried food on top.  I loved food to the point of sick obsession.

It's the way I grew up.  We went grocery shopping on pay day, splurged on all the cheap, fatty foods, bought meat and carbohydrates in bulk, and threw in some apples, oranges, and bananas for good measure.  All of our vegetables came in a can, except iceberg lettuce and tomatoes for the infrequent ranch dressing topped salad.  My mother cooked the way her mother cooked the way her mother cooked.  My great grandmother was raising a family during the depression.  You filled up on starch and gravy.  So that's what we did.  We were working class, and we made do with what we had.

I has taken me decades to break those bad habits.  I was doing great before I got pregnant.  Then I went crazy with fattening up like a Thanksgiving turkey; I put on 75 pounds, and my daughter was born showing signs of diabetes.

Then I was afraid to lose too much weight too fast and lose my breastmilk, a problem rampant in my family history.

Well, I breastfed for the full year, maintaining a healthy weight for my baby, and a (ahem) more than healthy weight for myself.

So here I sat, more than a year after weaning my baby, staring her second birthday in the face, still weighing in at more than thirty pounds over my BMI.

Because that is what this has always been about:  a healthy weight.  I do not care about my weight per se.  I look at super skinny women and think, "poor thing.  Have a sandwich."  My brother and I argue about "hot" women that I think are far too thin to be healthy.  I never aimed to be skinny, and I still don't.

I do want my daughter to see me as a role model of health, in contrast to the yo-yo dieting women I grew up watching depriving themselves of treats, taking diet pills, looking for the next get thin quick fix to lose weight fast to fit into those jeans even if it means lying down flat on the bed to pull the zipper up while I suck it in as much as I can.

No thanks.

I run for my life.  I run for my daughter's life.  I still indulge in a half cheeseburger.  I still have Cheeseboard pizza with my coworker on Wednesday nights.  I have my little dark chocolate bar filled with speculoos (from Trader Joe's.  If you haven't had it, run and get some now.)  I have two glasses of wine on my nights off.  I get my gummy bears when we go out to the theater.  I enjoy all of my treats.  But depending on what they are, I enjoy them rarely, or in small portions.  For the most part my diet consists of lean meats, healthy grains, and fresh fruits and vegetables, fuel for my body.  My daughter eats the same way.  In fact, she picks through my salad with her own little fork, plucking out pieces of avocado, tomato, or spinach, asking "mama, take the stem off?"  And for the last two months I have steadily worked my way down ten pounds.  My daughter does "exercises" with me at park where we stop toward the end of my run, twisting and bending into yoga poses along with me.  I feel fit.  More of the cute clothes in my closet fit.  I feel proud.  I feel alive.

I am not shooting for some date.  I will not do this until I hit a certain weight and then stop.  In fact, I worry what I will do once I get down, twenty more pounds, into a healthy BMI range.  I have no intention of continuing to lose much more weight beyond the top of that range, but I have no intention of quitting my routine.  I will keep up this routine for the rest of my life.  I plan to run well into my next pregnancy, as my doctor has said I can.  I hope my daughter asks to jog with me some day when she's old enough.  And until then, she sits patiently, playing with her toys, in the stroller.

I love jogging.  I get runner's high.  I get into a zone when I run.  I feel invincible, both physically and mentally.  There is no problem that seems too difficult to overcome, not even my brother and husband harassing me while I write to come and play monopoly.  Nothing.

So I will keep running.  For my life.  For my daughter's life.

And so I can enjoy that half cheeseburger, those slices of pizza, that ice cream cone, and still have one enchilada.

And two glasses of wine.

Note to Self: Read Before You Share

Occasionally, as I'm quickly scanning and scrolling friends' posts and blogs and articles from sites I follow on Facebook, I will come across a title that sounds interesting to me.  But because I have mere seconds to scan, I "share" it, so that it will appear on my own page, and I can come back to read the whole thing later without having to search endlessly for it.

Yes, sometimes I ask myself if I really want to share something with friends that I am not even sure I actually like.  In the end, though, I do it because I figure the topic is interesting enough and just because I have it on my Facebook page does not necessarily mean I agree with every single word in an article or blog post.  And I was okay with that.  Okay with it being on my page.  Okay with my name being associated with whichever issue I took interest in, because at least, regardless of the opinion given by the author, I am interested in the general discussion.

Until today.

This morning I saw a Huffington Post blog title that struck me to my core:  "I dropped everything in my life . . . but gained so much more."

Totally me!  I was on the fast track to a PhD program, thrilled to get to teaching, having my own classroom; I had pretty much given up on the idea of having children naturally, and then I missed a period.  Two years after beginning to try to have a baby and here I was in the prime of my life, ready to embark on a whole new journey... pregnant.

So I did drop everything and gain so much more.  I wrote my thesis as quickly as I could and threw myself into motherhood.  I embarked on a whole different new journey.  And I have never for a second wished it were any other way.

So I was eagerly looking forward to Celaya's naptime today so that I could read what this woman had given up and what she had gained.

From the very first paragraph I was angry.  By the time I got to the end of the essay I was outraged and ashamed.  Ashamed that I had put my name on this woman's blatant disregard for humanity in the name of self satisfaction.

I have since deleted the post from my page (the only time I have ever done that), but I am reposting it here, so that I am not mistaken as overdramatic or misrepresenting her story.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/19/i-dropped-everything-in-my-life_n_4769872.html

Essentially, this woman still has the hots for her high school sweetheart, and, because she is consumed by a sense of her own mortality (her mother is dead, her father seems to be dying in a hospital nearby), decides to uproot her entire life and move in (to her childhood home) with this man.

So?  Who cares, right?  To each her own.

Sure.  I have been there.  I was married when I was much younger and left my husband for another man who gave me the hots.  Been there done that.

But I did not have children.  I was terribly unhappy.  And I was a child.

This woman is forty years old, describes her marriage as having been happy, and has children at home in New York.  The man, ironically named Carlos, is also married with children.  And she left it all.

Because Carlos gives her great orgasms.

In a nutshell.

The entire piece is a drippy Harlequin romance that allows for the feelings of not one other person.  She writes as though her children came happily along, across the country from their daddy, to live with a stranger and his children.  Additionally, she simply asks Carlos to move in, and he does, with his children.  And now they are all so happy to wake up in the morning and life is perfect.

Really?  The fact that she could ever be held up as any kind of champion, strong woman, risk taker, is so atrocious to me that I just sat there with my jaw dropped.

I am not so furious that she hurt people.  Although I am certainly upset about that.  What I am enraged over is that she writes about it all as though we, as fellow humans, fellow women, should be proud of her, should nod our heads in agreement, should follow her lead.  "Yes, yes!"  She wants us to shout.  "Carpe Diem! Vive L'amour!"  Because, she justifies, she does not want to wake up just okay with life, she want to wake up "with ardor."

A forty year old woman should know, having lived forty years, that not one person on earth wakes up every single morning for years on end with ardor.

This woman, the epitome of self-servitude, is not even content in life with happiness (the thing I have been ranting about for a few days), she needs ardor!

Fittingly, I was working on a passage of reading last night in a study book for the MCAT (a dear friend of mine is taking the MCAT, ne pas moi), and the topic was individualism.  In the end, the author makes clear that socialism actually feeds into individualism; it is just that, he says, we have been thinking about both socialism and individualism all wrong.  We, as a society, think capitalism and individualism go together because "I want money, or houses, or cars, or clothes, so I should have it, and capitalism will help me get it."  Basically, individualism in our minds is equal to what we have.  But, this writer points out, individualism is not about what we have, it is about who we are.  And if we are so focused on what we have, how can we ever figure out who we are?  Whereas, in a modern socialist society, where people agree to work for the common good, and not let their fellow citizens slip through the cracks, we are focused on doing good work for others, on being good members of society.  Ideally, of course.

Then I read this article today, and cannot help but think that this woman is the perfect example of ill defined individualism.

Because, really, at some point she will have to face herself, right?  Wonder what kind of person she really is.  Who she is.  What good she is doing for anyone other than herself.  Have to look her children in the eyes and explain her actions to them.  Wake up and smell Carlos' nasty breath, or look at his softening middle, and think, "oh yea, I gained so much more."