Why I Care About Whitney

I found out about Whitney Houston's death, fittingly, through Twitter. My daughter saw it on her feed while the rest of the family was playing a little snowy day Rock Band (Alice was wailing on the drums, or "grums" as she calls them), and not believing her, I picked up my phone and confirmed on my own feed. Such is the way things are done now, I suppose. Within minutes, I was posting my own thoughts on Facebook and scouring other people's posts for more information.

It didn't take long, as it never does, for the trolls to come out with their typical rallying call of "SHE WAS A CRACK ADDICT! WHY DO YOU CARE! I SAVE MY GRIEF FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER COMMITTED AN OFFENSE OF ANY KIND EVER." I saw this a lot when Amy Winehouse died, and to be honest, I was too upset then to mount any kind of response. I was a big fan of Amy, still am. So I just ignored it. But now, with Whitney, it all just pisses me off.

We all make mistakes and do horrible, horrible things to one another and to ourselves. It is part of the human experience. I dare say that if all of our mistakes, issues and foibles were laid bare to the public absolutely no one would mourn anyone when they died. Or maybe we would, because we would only then realize that no one, no matter how angelic their voice or beautiful their face is immune to the very real notion of being human. Whitney struggled with a very real problem--a disease, in fact--that does not reveal her as a horrible person. It reveals her as a person, a very real, imperfect one. Much like me and you.

My parents divorced when I was two. I don't remember it at all, really, and that's for the best, I suppose. My mom and I moved in with my grandparents for three years following the divorce while my mom got her accounting license and started a business. During this time, she also bought this little gray Mazda RX-7, a two seater deal with plush, burgundy interior. It was the first car she'd ever purchased on her own. She would pull the top down on that thing on the weekends and put me in it, and we would fly down the road to Kingsport to eat dinner out on a Saturday night. Our favorite tapes were the ones by Tina Turner and Whitney Houston, the Whitney album to be exact. I thought about that a lot yesterday. My mom was the age that I am now at that time in her life. She was navigating a new life alone with a toddler and a new business. And Whitney helped, I think. No matter what was going on, she could get in that tiny car on those winding country roads and there was a perfect voice guiding her on.

I asked my mom about that tape this morning and she choked up a bit and said that she had downloaded the album on her iPod when she got rid of the last cassette player she had. She still listens to it, she said.

My first cd was The Bodyguard soundtrack. I have joked a lot in my adult life that everything I ever learned about sex was from Janet Jackson's Janet album, but a lot of what I learned about love and romance was from listening to The Bodyguard in my room, dancing like a maniac to "I'm Every Woman," and imagining who I would someday sing "I Will Always Love You" to. The music was the kind of music that you remember, that got you. I had a lot of other cds during this time period to, but I don't remember much of them. But I can remember specific moments of sitting on this big white trunk that used to sit in my room, the wicker making impressions on the backs of my bare legs and listening to Whitney.

No, I didn't know her, and it may sound odd to someone on Facebook who doesn't mourn celebrities. But she knew me. Somehow, she knew me and she knew my mom and she sang to us. She helped us grow up, to move on, to become who we are.

And yes, people die every day. And it is horrible and sad. But we should not let that reality tell us who is deserving of our grief.

Jamaican Me Crazy

On Wednesday of this week, my family and I are going to Jamaica, to the Beaches Resort in Negril. My brother in law is getting married there (or more aptly, at the adjacent Sandals Resort, which does not allow kids), and we are attending. Everyone in the family is in the wedding, except for myself and Alice. I get to see my husband in a tux, which will be a little bit o' awesome (especially since the tux features a BIG, green satin bow tie, and when he tried it on, I had to bite my tongue to keep from yelling, "And now the Guv-nah from the great state of South Carolina!"). My husband hasn't worn a tux since my junior prom. Also wearing a tux: my son, Sam, who looks appropriately miserable in it, but having served as a ring bearer before is more comfortable and more...let's say tactful about his lot in life than Matt is. AWESOME SAUCE.

Going to an all-inclusive resort of this kind is not something I think I ever would have done, had I not been invited, or needed a reason to get the hell out of Virginia in January which is, let's face it, a really sorry ass time to live in Virginia. For instance, when Matt told me about the wedding, my first response was, "Wait...they're getting married at the place where Michael Scott took Jan that time? Holy shit." That was my only frame of reference because I had never considered doing this kind of thing. I'm more of a "Let's fly to Edinburgh with really no plan at all, and just experience the country!" kinda girl. We are the people, after all, who turned a little four day trip across the country into a 10 day event just because we decided we wanted to go to Tombstone, Arizona. And when family vacation is involved, we're the educational parents, the ones waking our kids up at 7 to go to museums and eating at local food dives we find on the internet. For instance, my husband is planning a trip in 3 years (yes, we look out that far when it comes to travel) to Europe and he wants to spend half a day showing our kids the historic Parisian sewer system because an old professor told him that was "fun". OUR KIDS LOVE US.

People keep asking me if I am excited, and I guess I am. I am excited to start drinking all the watered down drinks some guy who made two whole dollars last year can shove down my throat. I am excited not to be at work, and to get to see my kids during the hours of 8 and 5. I am excited to go out to dinner with my husband, with whom I will have been with for 14 years on Wednesday and who shares my love for making really bad Jamaica jokes that end with the word "mon". I am excited to wear the new shoes I ordered from Lands End Canvas last week. But as far as being super excited about the trip, I'm not.

I've struggled with that a bit, and I've come to the conclusion that I am just a curmudgeonly old woman. And I wonder a lot about this, if I'm so different from other people my age around the country (PLEASE SAY I'M NOT--I DON'T WANT TO BE ALONE ON THE ISLAND OF UNDERWHELMED). I see people who get so excited about stuff--going to Disney World seems to be a popular one, or eating bacon--and I feel pretty disconnected. Sure, I get inordinately happy about things--the start of baseball season, for instance, or 40% sales at J.Crew (HELLO, JARDIN SKIRT)--but I don't get wildly, haphazardly excited about stuff anymore. I am pretty neutral all the time. And I'm not medicated, if that's what you are thinking. For better or worse.

I wonder when I left all that behind, when I became this way. I also wonder if it is not necessarily a bad thing. Like I said, I am pretty neutral, so just as I am not excitable all the time, I'm not oscillating into wild, self-flagellating depression either. YEA. Here's to not locking myself in a room to listen to Nirvana's Unplugged album for a day, while I write really bad poetry, weep, and try to "feel!"

And since this a Debby Downer post in a way, I'll just declare a short intermission say this: BALLS.

Yeah.

You think about balls and try not to be happy. Doesn't matter what kind of balls are bouncing through your mind right now (and I think we all know what kind are floating through mine), you're smiling.

BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED ENNUI AND SELF REVELATION.

Shockingly, I feel the same way about Pinterest, I have come to find out. When Pinterest first started, I really liked it. I am the type of girl who sits at the computer with a legal pad beside of me, where I write down things I see that I like, be they recipes or dresses or whatever. Here was an online board where I could keep all those things together. And the pictures are pretty. SCORE. But now, when I look at it, I realize that what Pinterest is really used for is just porn for girls who don't like porn. It's is furniture porn, food porn, BOOT porn (which I'm pretty guilty of myself). It is "Here's a brownie, with a layer of fucking cookie dough on top of that and then because I really, really hate my arteries, the little fuckers, I'm going to pour hot fudge on top of that and call it a recipe. BOO YAH." It is someone's dream world, set to pictures, and given a jar of Nutella. But it ain't my dream world, really. Since I am old, and crochetty and given to melancholy and black coffee, I look at that stuff, and I file it away in "No one really makes that," or "That would kill you," or "How to turn a kid into a sociopath in 5 easy steps!" or "IN THIS ECONOMY?!?!" I keep going there, thinking it will change, but it doesn't, and my pins are halfhearted, and I just know you can tell. So really, what I'm saying is, I suck at Pinterest.

And at going on vacation.

Sorry.

Did the internet do this to me? Divorced parents? Being an only child? Television?

Let's go with the internet. Thanks, Al Gore.

On Marriage

I read last night that Dooce blogger Heather Armstrong and her husband have split. Well, I guess, "trial separation" is the more appropriate wording. I read Dooce pretty religiously when I was living in CA--her style really appealed to me as an ex-southerner living smack dab on the other side of the country. I stopped reading about the time of the "washing machine incident" which was about the time that the Armstrongs started getting fancy. It just wasn't palatable to me anymore and led to me feeling more pissed off after I read each post. I didn't need that in my life. But, still, I totally dig Armstrong's style with words.

I guess that is why this news struck me so strangely. I was up last night thinking about this shit, ya'll. And while my anxiety ridden mind will often find really odd things to get fixated on at 4:00 in the morning, I think there are other reasons why I'm sitting here at my desk, listening to Ryan Adams's Cry on Demand and feeling all together like a sadsack 14 year old. I know it sounds odd, but I have a strange idea (especially strange, since I am a child of divorced parents) that marriages, when they are entered into by smart, caring, modern people like myself and Armstrong and all three of you readers, are infallible. Love, as it is, will find a way and if you are quirky enough to accept the fact that the other person is wackily, oddly adorable and their faults similar, you are more than ready to accept the mantle of that lifetime commitment. So basically, to put it simply, marriage in my mind is a Zooey Deschanel movie. Sure, it can be irritating, but in the end, it is too wonderfully dorky to step away from. Seriously! Look at those eyes and walk away!

Of course, that is not true at all, and despite my heart's protestations, my brain knows better. People get divorced all the time, even if they are bright and spend their days looking at Tumblr blogs and clips from The Daily Show. Matt and I have had our rough patches, and none of them were caused by anything cerebral. They were all caused by complete and utter shit, the daily minutiae of life that eats at you like a bedbug. Take, for instance, last night. Alice is going through an especially trying sleep time right now, a problem that has caused me much (yes, even more) sleeplessness and has really threatened my sanity (for reals, ya'll). I couldn't get her to sleep last night, just couldn't do it, and Matt and I were both pissed at her for it. Yeah, we were pissed at a 2 year old. But she is an especially adorable little thing, and well, you shouldn't be pissed off at something that really can't control anything in it's life, even it's own bodily functions. So we took it out on each other. Finally, Matt took Alice and a stack of books off to the bedroom, and I sulked on the couch and thought mean thoughts about him until I fell asleep. Maturity, ya'll. I HAZ IT.

This kind of crap, day in and day out, that's what does it. Tears the adorable Zooeys into screaming Kris Kardashians. And people tell you all this stuff about marriage, that you have to work at it, that you shouldn't go to bed mad and all of that. And it is all true, I suppose, for someone's marriage. Not necessarily mine. In my mind, saying I have to "work at" something, means that I won't do it, just like I won't work at learning math or developing a decent skin care routine. So I don't think about marriage in those terms. And if I couldn't go to bed mad at something, nothing would ever get solved. I will stay up and argue until I am blue in the face--if I can just go to bed, get some sleep, however short it may be, when I get up, I will be much more pleasant, and probably, have forgotten what pissed me off in the first place.

So I don't know the answers. I don't even have a decent, funny platitude to write on the "Recipe for a Successful Marriage" card for my brother-in-law's wedding reception next week. But what I keep thinking about is this moment, right after my actual wedding. Matt and I ditched the hokey recessional and walked out of the Wren Chapel (like bosses, I might add) to Heroes by David Bowie. And there was this moment, when we were standing in the back in front of the big double doors, and no one from the rest of the wedding had moved yet, and we just stood there together with these big goofy grins on our faces and I can only describe the feeling going through my mind as "LOOK AT WHAT WE JUST DONE DID." It was definitely one of the happiest, most sublime, almost otherworldly moments of my life. And I guess, if I had to write a tip for marriage, if I had to boil it down to what I want and what everyone deserves to have, it would be to always be with the only other person in the world who remembers that moment. The only other person who was there, and who was there all those other times and has the same screwed up memories that I do. I want to be in my 80's and be able to look at the other person at the kitchen table and say "Remember when Alice was a newborn and she had a green tint to her butt-crack?" or "Remember that time we took the kids to New York and got Sam's stroller (with Sam in it) caught in a subway turnstile?"

So I guess that is why I am sad. I want that, and I want for everybody to have that, and the fact that Heather Armstrong, a person who I have never met and will probably never meet and will probably not really remember in 10 years might not have that, well, it fucks with me. I am not the most sane person on the block.

Marriage will make you that way, I suppose.

September 11

I'll just be honest and say I've never really observed September 11. I've never paid attention to the specials on TV or watched the various memorials. The date served as a small reminder of the day, but nothing more.

This year has been different. My kids have shown a real interest in it, as they are both at the age to where things like this are questionable. They both like history, and because of that, both like the History Channel. And the History Channel shows a lot of September 11 documentaries and things like that. We watched a couple of them as a family, and I answered the precipitating questions about each. In doing so, I thought a lot more about the event than I have since it happened.

The most obvious question that anyone asks is the ubiquitous "Where were you?" kind of thing. I was 18. It was my freshman year of college at The College of William and Mary; I had been at college for just a few weeks. I was living on my own for the first time, such as it was--interestingly, I was living in a hotel room as the dorm I had been assigned to was being ripped apart because they had found asbestos in it. I was taking English 203, Calculus, Biological Anthropology, and a freshman seminar called Indian Fiction. I had a crush on the professor of that one.

On September 11, I got up early and went to my 9:30 Biological Anthropology class. I rode a bus from the hotel, and I remember being the only one on it. I was the kind of kid, at least during my freshman year, that showed up early for class so that she could review her reading and make extra notes and generally just be ready. I got to the room where the class was held, Washington 201, which is one of the biggest rooms on Old Campus--one of the only ones that can fit over 100 students. I took a seat in the middle of the right side even though I was the only one there. A guy who was a real gunner--my God this guy was annoying, which means that he's probably a doctor now--showed up. We had never talked before, but all of a sudden, there he was, right beside my seat. He asked me if I knew what was going on, and I told him that I didn't. He told me about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I don't really remember having a reaction. I remember thinking that it must have been a horrible accident. We talked for a bit, then he went to his seat, and then he got up and started walking around. Again, I didn't think anything of it. Nervous guy--nervous energy.

Matt was taking the same class that semester. We had planned to take a class together, even though at the beginning of that semester, we were not really getting along. We did enjoy the class though--well, I take that back. We both hated the class, thought the professor was arrogant and a little weird. But it was fun having someone in there who rolled their eyes at all the same times. We generally sat together and commiserated for an hour and a half and then went our separate ways for the day.

Matt came in around the same time that lots of other people were coming in, which is unusual since he was usually late. He said that he had been brushing his teeth back in the French house and had seen the second plane hit. It was about that time that people started realizing what was happening. We talked quietly until the professor came in. She was weirder than usual and we spent the first part of class with just everyone comparing notes on what they had seen or heard. At some point, her teaching assistant came in and whispered that a plane had hit the Pentagon. The professor told us, and all Hell broke loose. Most kids who go to W&M have some relationship with the D.C. area: either they live there themselves or they are a diplobrat or have a family member working in the government. People started getting up and running out. A few people screamed. I remember a girl standing in the hallway, crying and punching numbers on her cellphone. Matt and I left, but didn't really know where to go. We walked together to the University Center, more following the crowd than anything. I remember laughing uneasily on the way there--I had not seen any footage yet, and nothing felt really "real." I remember thinking that this all could be some elaborate joke.

When we got to the U.C., we watched the towers fall on the big screen TV there. People cried and hugged each other. I remember being really numb about the whole thing. I guess I was scared. I felt strange and out of it--unlike most of my classmates, I didn't know anyone in D.C. or New York. I had been to both cities--had a picture of myself on a ferry with the World Trade Center in the background hanging in my dorm room. But I had no idea how to feel. I bought myself a peanut butter mocha frappuccino thing from the college coffee house and walked to Calculus, thinking I'd get out of that and go home. The professor, a very strange Canadian man who just may have been a sociopath, told us that he didn't understand what the big deal was and made us do a bunch of problems that none of us understood. What a douche. But what can you expect from the country that gave us Nickelback?

It wasn't until I got back to my hotel room and started watching TV that the whole gravity of the situation hit me. I started to get scared, watching the military units from around Newport News and Norfolk starting to go into threat stage. I finally got a hold of my mom, who begged me to go to stay with my uncle in Richmond. Why? I have no idea. I sent an especially fraught email to the professor I had a crush on, who advised me to come to his office the next day and gave me some Buddhist texts to read before I came. Like a boss.

And then Matt came over to my room. We watched the footage for a while, and then decided we had to get away from it. Since I was living off-campus, I had my car, so we went out to eat at Ruby Tuesday. I have no idea how we picked it--a lot of places were closed, but Ruby Tuesday was open. We were the only people in the restaurant. We went to Target and then came back to campus. I did some homework, talked with my roommate, and went to bed. Matt and I promised to see each other the next day, and I was fine with that. We saw each other for every day after that, as I'm sure you know.

And I still didn't know what to think or how to feel.

A few days following the attack, classes were dismissed for the day. I went to the campus's memorial, and finally, the waves of grief and sadness started hitting me. On my way back to my room, I picked up a copy of our college's newspaper. On the front, I saw the shining eyes of a girl, much like myself. She was an alumna, had graduated the year before and she had died when the plane hit World Trade Center 1.

I read enough to find out that like me, she was a mother. She had balanced having a child (born before her senior year at W&M) with getting her degree. She was married to another W&M alum. She was from VA. She was beautiful and full of life and resilient and intelligent. And now, she was gone.

Seeing that face is what brought it home to me. Just what we had lost. I think of her every year, wonder what her life would have been like if she had been late for work that morning. Every year, I think about her in relation to my own life--Would she have moved? Left NY? Would she worry about her daughter growing up too fast, the same as me?

The year I've thought about her the most. Her daughter and my oldest daughter are the same ages, and I have started to wonder if they will ever meet--if they will both follow the route of their parents and go to W&M. I wonder if she would message her daughter on Facebook like I do, even when that daughter is just a room away, if she would send her daughter funny pictures of dogs in bathing suits. And my youngest is two now, the same age as that daughter on 9/11/01. What would it be like to leave her now?

Gabby has asked me lots of questions this last week. Where was I? What did I do? Was I scared? I have answered truthfully. She asked me how I felt that day. And I am truthful there to. I told her that I didn't know how to feel. And that that didn't change, until I met someone who I wish I had known earlier, who I think of every year, who I would give lots of things just to buy a coffee for one day and share memories about pushing a stroller around the Sunken Gardens.

Rest in peace, Alysia.

When the Stars Go Blue

It's only Tuesday. But it has already been that kind of week around here.

Without getting into anything in particular, I'll just say that nothing in my life seems to be going particularly well at the moment. There is a blind feeling of speeding down a path that is not one that I want to go down right now. And, perhaps most pervasive, there is a sense of loss for a person that I knew for such a fleeting, relatively short time.

So here I sit at my desk, wearing all black and listening to the Ryan Adams station on Pandora like some lovesick 20 year old. I kinda don't know what to do with myself. Where ever I find myself, whatever I am doing, it doesn't seem quite right, doesn't seem to be what I really need to be doing.

Mama said there'd be days like these I suppose. Kind thoughts appreciated. Also appreciated: bottles of wine.