I want you to know I saw the look of distress on your face as I closed the door of the daycare this morning.

I recognized it immediately, which is why the extra hugs and kisses before I left for work.

I used to look like that too. I was the rare child that started hating school in Kindergarten, and spent every school day of the next 13 years (K-12th grade) smiling on the outside (most of the time anyway), while inwardly counting the days until it was over.  The difference between your experience of school and mine is that up until this year, you absolutely LOVED school.  You liked doing your homework, and looked forward to challenges and writing reports.  I started noticing a subtle shift the closer we got to Christmas break, though.  Assignments would slip through the cracks, here and there.  You quit putting in the same effort you did before, and getting you to work through things went from the breeze it was to a trying experience of tears and half-hearted effort.

Any inquiries as to what had changed were met with shrugs, and nearly whispered "I don't know"s.  Up until last night, when comparing an F on a random assignment with a long list of A's and B's on tests given the same week, and I realized that the two pictures didn't mesh, and I called you on it.  I told you that we could work this one of two ways:  I could go the punitive route, and just punish you for the bad grade, or we could talk about what led up to that, and see if we could find a way to stop this from happening again.  Much as I said yesterday, I can't help you fix it if you are not honest about what's going on.  Even though, after it all came out in a low defeated voice while staring at the accumulated dust at the bottom on my dresser, I don't know if this is something that can be fixed.

At the ripe old age of ten, you have begun that trip into the realm of the girls that don't want to seem too smart, lest they not have any friends.  I had so hoped you wouldn't have to go through this.  But as I watched you develop anxiety about school (the likely source of the bathroom issues and the resulting taunting which only made everything worse), I knew at some point I would hear this one admission that I wanted you to avoid.  That I thought women and girls had left behind in the 20+ years since I left school.

I purposely chose this semi-suburban environment because I wanted you to have a different academic experience than the one I had.  Inner city schools were okay for smart girls, but a great deal of support was needed to keep girls from becoming socially isolated because the other kids weren't sure what to make of them.  I aimed to not move while you went through elementary school so that you could make, and keep, the same friends, building up a set of social skills that I never really developed while we moved from place to place.  I didn't expect that to develop into kids that knew your weaknesses, and took obscene delight in pointing them out to you at every opportunity.  I figured because you were conventionally attractive, you wouldn't catch even 1/10th the hell I caught going through school for not being attractive enough.  I didn't realize until other people started pointing it out that you have a lighter version of almost my exact same face, along with the same big, coarse just barely manageable hair that does exactly as it pleases, which is usually the one thing that you DON'T want it to do.  How well I know that story.

You are a girl that loves math and science, who currently wants to be a teacher when you grow up.  I smile and tell you that this is wonderful, and you can do anything you want to do.  Internally I fight a war between encouraging you, and fiercely wanting to protect you from the rough waters that await a girl interested in STEM fields, especially as you prepare for your final year of elementary school next year, and from there prepare to navigate the far more treacherous territory of middle school.  I worry about you losing the sweet, funny, quirky nerd that you are to the jaded, outwardly tough, bravado spouting street kid that the surrounding neighborhood seems determined to turn you into.  I am divided between being awed by, and afraid of, the fact that as small and thin as you are, you really don't take any crap from any of the kids that pick on you because they are bigger than you, mostly because I told you not to.  My own experiences with being routinely bullied left me determined that my own children would never have to put up with the cruel jokes, snide remarks, and occasional physical confrontations that I was told to "ignore, and they will leave you alone"  (the biggest lie kids are told), however, in this age of strictly enforced Zero Tolerance policies, I fear your efforts to stand up for yourself will end in a flurry of suspensions that, rather than keep you from being a victim, might get you labeled as a troublemaker.  Which, by the way, is what started happening to your brother in middle school, which was so frequent by high school, that it was one of the many contributing factors to him dropping out.  Which is what I DON'T want to happen with you.

You have many more days of school to go, my darling daughter, and I will do the best I can to teach you, guide you, and help you learn how to get through them.  I can't guarantee you I will know all the right things to say and do to encourage you, and I know that as much as I would like to, I can never shield you from  all of the negativity that will come your way.  Nor should I attempt to keep you too sheltered, as you will need to learn how to deal with less than ideal people and situations.  But know that I do love you, and I am always willing to try to do whatever I can to make your journey a bit smoother (short of doing everything FOR you, but you knew that already), or at the very least, help you make sense of whatever is going on around you.  I think I can do that much.

I hope this helps.

There is nothing worse than a song that gets stuck in your head for days.  Especially if it's one of my tween daughter's sugary pop, Disney or Nickelodeon stars songs.  Then I have to find another earworm to try and cleanse my brain of the drivel that she loves so much.


I make no secret of the fact that I do not particularly enjoy my kids' tastes in music.  The fact that they play the songs TO DEATH is a guarantee that I will find myself humming the song at some random point, if only because I can't get away from it unless I barricade myself in my room with earplugs.  Having grown up listening to everything from the experimental jazz of the 60's, to the disco and hard funk of the 70's to my discovery of all things rock and roll, past and present in the 80's, generally I try to be pretty open about what I listen to.  But I can honestly say that I hate some of the sweet electropop my daughter loves more than I hate that whiny cartoon, Caillou, and that's saying a lot.

I kid, I kid.  Sort of.

Earworms are like that, though.  If it's a song you like, but maybe forgot about, having the song pop up suddenly can be a great memory of a time in your life that was free of the burdens and worries that you have now.  I love it when songs are tied to a movie I haven't seen in a long time, as it gives me a reason to go back and re-watch movies from my childhood and teen years.  It's interesting, however, when you are going through a extremely difficult or trying time in your life, and a song will suddenly pop into your head whose lyrics directly correspond to whatever it is that you are experiencing.  I've always figured that this was the universe's way of making sure you don't feel like you are going through this all alone; somebody out there gets it because they've been through it too.

I've has songs creep back into my memory that reminded of entire genres of music that I had forgotten about.  One morning I woke up with the song "Beautiful Disaster" by the group 311 playing in my head:

Up until that moment, I hadn't thought about the 90's alternative music that I used to love, much at all.  Once I looked it up on YouTube, it led me back to a lot of great artists and music that I used to love from LA radio station KROQ, until I stopped listening in the mid 90's.

These artists reminded me that I had always preferred my music with a little "bite" to it, and lyrics that actually talked about what was going on in the world, especially subjects people might overlook or take for granted.  I had always leaned more toward LA post-punk bands like X, or English punkers The Clash, more than mainstream pop.  Of course I was not totally immune to the charms of certain bands, remembering what slid under my radar and took up residence in my subconscious a couple of weeks ago:

If music really is the soundtrack of your life, per Dick Clark, the earworms I find most pleasant are the ones that develop after I've had to learn a song for one of the gospel choirs I sing with.  Don't get any big ideas; I am NOT a soloist, so much as I make a very joyful BACKGROUND noise.  These are the songs that tend to pop up in my head and stay for awhile when I'm down, or just not feeling areas of my life working out.  Songs with lyrics that are uplifting and let you know that you are definitely not all alone in your struggles.  Of course not all inspirational songs are gospel:

Sometimes a gospel-tinged vocal, mixed with a soaring jazz saxophone is all your memory needs to pull a certain song from your mental archives when needed.  

As varied as my musical background is, I find it interesting what kind of notes, lyrics, and occasionally entire albums spring into my head on a daily basis.  It rarely, if ever gets boring, and it's nice to know that the catalog in my head can pull up a song to match almost any occasion.  It makes for an interesting Facebook feed when I get post happy some nights.

And I don't hate EVERYTHING my kids listen to.  But don't tell them that.  Then I'll never get to listen to what I want while I clean the house.  And maybe plant a few earworms of my own.

Society taught me from an early age that I was ugly.

Even from my birth in 1971, I did not fit the popular standard of what was considered "beautiful", so I adapted to life as the type of person that I was perceived to be.  Second best.    When hanging out with any group of people, I was generally the one no one really spoke to anymore than they absolutely had to, which forced me to learn how to be funny as quickly as possible so that whatever brief conversation I got to have with someone would at least be a memorable one.  Being considered unattractive and being an introvert (I sometimes wonder if the former fed the latter), I became the fly on the wall of every social situation, my lack of interaction with others enabling me to become a seasoned observer of human behavior.

I used to be mystified by certain people's reaction to me.  Saying hello to people, and having them look around to make sure no one is watching before they return the greeting is a very instructive lesson in how human nature works.  No one wants to be seen acknowledging someone thought to be ugly.   Unless of course they are reminding you of this fact, loudly and with a great deal of derision.

I wish I could say that my experiences were unique.  Perusing the website Jezebel last week, I came across a posting from a young woman who was ruthlessly catcalled by men for no other reason than they did NOT find her attractive: 
http://groupthink.jezebel.com/ugly-c-nt-my-experience-of-street-harassment-1561588177/all    We've reached a point in society where polite behavior is a rare commodity.  Especially as it pertains to the old saying that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything.  This rule seemingly does not pertain to anyone society sees as unacceptable in any way.  Especially women.  Women are then subject from to anything from being ignored during routine social interactions to the loud, brutal assessments hurled at the author of the piece above.

But where does all of this come from?

My friend Susan sums it all up nicely: "We're conditioned to accept the societal definitions of beauty, which seem to grow narrower every year. Women are conditioned from the cradle. It keeps us in line and pits us against one another. If we weren't so busy worrying about what we looked like, imagine what we'd accomplish."

As it stands, the societal definition of beauty runs to the Scandinavian look: tall and slim, with pale skin, hair and eyes, is thought to be the absolute ideal.  The further you move away from that definition of beauty, the less worthy you are of consideration.  The less worthy you are of consideration, the more certain people feel that they are quite justified in being critical about any and every aspect of your personal appearance, or barring that, simply being dismissive of you altogether.  And while this is true across the board, women get the brunt of the harshest forms of this scrutiny.

The messages I have received from the media over the last couple of decades (or since I have been conscious enough to realize that there are subtle messages underlying a great deal of what we see), is that the main purpose of a woman's life is for men between the ages of 18-49 to find her attractive enough to have sex with.  In order to meet this goal, you must be as close as possible to the description outlined above, and if you are not, it is strongly encouraged that you spend as much time, money and effort as humanly possible in dogged pursuit of the ideal.  To be unable to spend your life chasing what for most amounts to an almost impossible ideal, due to disability, might garner you a pass from men who see the ideal as their due in life, if not their own goal to attain.  If you are unwilling to devote your life to becoming pleasing to the eye of random passerby on the street due to disinterest, or the fact that less than 5% of the population possess the ideal appearance naturally, and to spend too much time wishing to be something you are not is inherently mentally unhealthy, be prepared to be shown no mercy.

You will be assailed from all sides by well meaning, if misguided, attempts to steer you back on to the correct path of low-grade self hatred. It is the economic engine on which the beauty industry thrives.  Some will try cajoling, others will insult and demean you, but the larger goal is to let you know, by all means necessary that as you are, you are not acceptable to the male gaze. And if you dare to carry yourself with any kind of confidence (Those of us who have decided to be happy with our selves whether people find us attractive or not), despite being considered unattractive, many of the supremely insecure, who rely on others for validation, will make it their mission in life to remind you that, by popular estimation, you are not enough.  How dare you be happy with yourself, as is!  Don't you know that you are supposed to be striving to conform to what random strangers feel you should be so said random strangers won't have to tell you that you are still not acceptable to them?

If you are still unattractive, unwilling to attempt conformity, and perhaps content with yourself, you will be ignored, with an extra helping of contempt and scorn.  The comments section of the Jezebel piece will bear this out.  There are too many women who have been overlooked or ignored out right for no other reason than they were thought to be ugly.  To be thought of as ugly, but not sufficiently humble, will earn you large doses of what I like to call aggressive ignoring.  This is when someone attempts to interact in a normal way, and realizing that a horrified reaction is an overreaction, the person they attempted to interact with openly ignores them.  I can't tell you how many times, I've tried to participate in a normal discussion (after weighing my words carefully to make sure that my contribution was on topic and appropriate), only to be roundly ignored as if I weren't part of the group.  As I look around me, I see other women subject to this same treatment, and I shudder to think what internal processes they must go through just to get through the day.  For some, it must feel like the treatment they received in childhood never ended.

My friend Lisa put it this way: "When you're bullied as a child, you know who's bullying you and why. You learn how the system works because you have to in order to survive. I think it's the same for any children who are victimized by anyone for any reason, their brains develop a very sophisticated level of insight into the situation and they become very wise about it at an early age. Part of the damage that causes is that you never truly break out of that schema for the rest of your life, even though the bullying has stopped and everyone has grown up, you still read the people around you as though they're getting ready to bully you for the same childish reasons. And you don't even know you're doing that most of the time."

It's a strange road we walk, those thought of as ugly and/or unattractive.  It's a road made stranger by the fact that we live in a world where singling us out for random verbal and/or psychological abuse is thought of as perfectly acceptable as we are not considered real people, if we are in fact considered at all.  Pretty people will tell you that theirs is no easy walk through life either, what with the constant belief by those in the middle of the spectrum (neither conforming to the ideal nor considered ugly),that they are coasting through life on their looks, and are unlikely to have either any real talent or intelligence.  Women feel like they can't win no matter where they are on the spectrum.  This subject was covered in depth, and quite well in 1990 by Naomi Wolf in her book "The Beauty Myth".  The sad thing  about this is that, 24 years after the publication of Wolf's book, not only has very little changed, the treatment of women, based solely on their perceived attractiveness to a specific demographic of men, has actually gotten worse.  To paraphrase Wolf's opening, as women make larger social and political strides, the definition of the ideal woman becomes narrower, and those who do not conform are now met with open hostility by those who feel threatened by changes in the world, and feel the need to maintain the status quo the only way they know how.  Crush anybody you feel is beneath you by any means necessary.  These people don't realize that not everybody is entitled to their opinion, the person you are trying to embarrass has been hearing some version of the same thing all their life, and it costs you absolutely nothing to be polite to someone that is being polite to you.

I am an idealist.  In an ideal world, what is on the inside really would count, and people would treat you accordingly.  If only.....

So it has not escaped anyone's attention that Easter Sunday falls on April 20th, or as stoners refer to the day, 4/20, this year.

Of course some good Christian pastors are all up in arms about the coincidence, loudly denouncing the use of what they consider a "gateway drug" from the pulpit.  Other pastors are using the day as a day to reach out to addicts to try and convert them from their use of marijuana with catchy sermon titles, inviting them to get high on Jesus.  I find this ridiculous and more than a tiny bit condescending.  Even as a Christian, I realize that just because I choose not to indulge in, ahem, herbal remedies, that doesn't make me a better person than those that do.

I suppose I noticed this because as an African American woman that wears dreadlocks, I am often mistaken for being a Rasta, a practitioner of the Rastafari lifestyle.  It is an entirely misunderstood practice, in that while the smoking of what they refer to as ganga as a part of their spiritual practices is an option, it's not an option that many Rastas choose to exercise.  They would prefer to stick to the tenants of not polluting their body with unnatural substances (they prefer natural, not processed foods), and keeping their minds clear.  Actually, the smoking of substances as a part of spiritual practice goes back much further than the early 1900's start of Rastafari.

The smoking of weed for the purpose of opening up one's mind to a higher power can be traced back to ancient Asia.  Ganga, in fact, the the Sanskrit word for the plant.  Indians introduced the plant to Asia in the 19th century when they were imported to Asia as cheap labor.  Early Native Americans smoked native plants for much the same reason.  The important thing to note, however, was that no one smoked for the purpose of getting high.  That was a western construct once the side effects of the weed became widely known.

What fascinates me is the thought of opening up one's mind in order to better discern divine influences.  Some Eastern religions teach the art of meditation, the purpose being the calming of your mind, in order to be more in tune with both the universe and the divine.    More fundamentalist Christian leaders would have their followers believe that you need to close your mind to anything that doesn't agree with the worldview you are being taught, never mind being more in tune with everything and everyone around you.  More progressive Christian leaders realize that most religious and spiritual practices have more in common than differences, and encourage certain practices, like meditation, because they know that a calm, open mind is extremely important to a focused, intentional prayer life.

If I learned anything from a short class I received on Comparative Religion, it's that people will search for enlightenment, answers to questions about the meaning of their lives and struggles, wherever they are using whatever means are available to them. For some this could mean prayer, for some meditation, and for some, yes it could be the smoking of herbs.  Which is wonderful, as when people are not allowed to search for answers to eternal questions, that inner turmoil can possible manifest itself externally as violence directed towards anybody they deem different than themselves.  Witness any war fought the world over for the freedom to practice one's religious preference.  I am all for the Freedom of Religion, as theorized in our constitution.  So long as you are not harming yourself (Really harming yourself, not as imagined by someone else.), harming anyone else, or forcing your beliefs on anyone else, search for the infinite in whatever way seems best to you.

Here's to your search for enlightenment.  However you choose to pursue it.

We were laughing so loudly, I thought people were going to start staring.

A co-worker and I were discussing our shared HMO's habit of prescribing medicine without examining us, and she had just relayed a story in which she had a VERY unexpected reaction to the prescribed medication.  She told the story in such a way that I burst into startled laughter.  I told my own story of the medication side effect merry-go-round, including one that left me staring into space for 10 minutes at a time because my mind would suddenly go blank; she chuckled at our shared experience.  We figured we better move on before we disturbed anyone, but it was a nice break from the non-stop busyness of the workday.

It's a proven scientific fact that laughter has healing powers.  We need to see the upside to situations in order to get through them.  If we can laugh at it, even better.  Had I not discovered the writings of Erma Bombeck, I don't know how I would have gotten through my son's childhood.  With all of the drop dead serious parenting articles and advice, I never realized that I could laugh at some of the crazier stuff that was either going on around me, and/or happening to me directly.  Dilbert is a staple in offices for the same reason.   Those of us spending the best years of our lives in Cubicle-Land need to feel like someone understands the craziness, and can relate to it.  Take the endless rounds of meetings we all have to deal with.  If you can't find the humor in that, you probably conduct a few.

I remember talking to a friend about what I call Death by Meeting.    It came out of the fact that studies have shown that the average life expectancy of office workers is lower than that of manual laborers.  Spending 8-10 hours a day behind a desk can contribute to hardening of the arteries, eye strain from staring at a computer screen, and a host of other ailments related to long periods of being sedentary.  I said that the real reason for the decline in office workers health is due to being slowly bored to death in endless meetings.  If you've ever been in a long, tedious meeting, where you felt your brain cells dying while the Executive Supreme Leader used trendy jargon to say nothing in particular, you understand.  I have come to loathe meetings over the last few years.  Rarely have so few, gathered so many, so often, to say so little.  A friend of mine once told me that we couldn't have lunch because she was in back to back meetings all day, from the time she walked in the office at 9:00, until sometime after 6:00pm that evening.  I could relate.  That same day, I had three meetings.  My old supervisor used to have one day per week that was filled with nothing but non-stop, sometimes overlapping meetings.  I once told her that someone needed to have a meeting about all the meetings.  She shot back that the Executive staff were already planning a meeting about meetings.  That made perfect sense to me.  Everything in most offices revolves around staff meetings.  “Staff” being the key word here.  There is department staff, Executive staff, division staff, section staff, field staff, staff for special projects and staff to keep track of staff.  All of them, except the Department level, have weekly meetings.    At these meetings, everyone is made to stop what they are doing for a length of time that ranges from one hour to infinity (and occasionally beyond) in order for the leader/supervisor/underboss to tell you something you likely already know from the rumor mill, then ask you the status of whatever you are working on.  The smart leaders know there will be very little to report either way, and the only way they can get you in the door and paying attention is to ply you with caffeine and sugar to keep you awake.  I tend not to despise these meetings as much, if only because the person leading the meeting generally understands that nobody wants to be there, so they try to keep the meeting short and lively.  These meetings are rare and precious, so you have to enjoy them when you can.


If seeing the absurdity of certain workplace rituals gets me through the workday with my sanity in tact, only taking seriously the things that I absolutely HAVE to take seriously where the kids are concerned keeps me together the rest of the time.

I have found that I cannot take everything my kids do seriously.  If I did, the threat to my sanity would be real.  Take housecleaning and chores.  The last time the house was actually clean was right before my daughter's birthday sleepover in January, and only then because that's the only way we could fit six little girls on the living room floor.  Other than that my kids have what I call Object Blindness.  Whatever object they left on the floor/counter top/bed/washing machine is completely unseen until they discover it's in the way of whatever activity they were trying to do.  Then it will get removed to another surface for the duration of the activity, at which point it will be placed right back where it was.  When asked why the object wasn't just put away, thrown away, or otherwise dealt with, they then develop another condition called Mommy Deafness.  If it involves anything having to do with cleaning, they can't hear me.

Life is absurd.  With the exception of a VERY short list of situations and circumstances, the less seriously you take it, the better.  After all, to quote Jim Morrison, no one here gets out alive.  You might as well find something to enjoy about it, even if it is just laughing at your own foibles.   Serious people don't live as long as those who can see the lighter side of life, even occasionally, and are subject to a host of injuries, illnesses and stress-induced maladies.  Since I deal with a few stress-induced issues of my own, I had to learn some years ago to prioritize which issues needed my serious, focused attention, and what could only be shrugged off because there was very little if anything I could do about it.

A side note about snark, the current popular form of humor:  Although I don't mind taking cracks at myself, my shortcomings, or particular situations, I don't condone the belittling of people for someone else's amusement.  I have always detected  strong notes of condescension in snark, and as I don't like feeling talked down to, or about, I won't do it to anybody else.  But whatever blows your hair back.  This is just a "me" thing.

But I digress...

We do need to get through this life in the best mental and emotional shape possible.  Since laughter reduces stress hormones, lowers blood pressure and releases endorphins, I think that while watching a good comedy, or just having a great conversation with a co-worker might not have the same physical health benefits of jogging, it might be just as good, if not better, for your emotional well-being.  And you don't have to go outside, or get all sweaty to do it.  Besides, I want to be around for as long as possible, laughing all the way.