Oh Lordy! Here comes 40!

Before 2011 ends, I will turn 40.  40! Halfway to 80 and a generation ahead of 20.  For the first time, I am realizing just how much of an adult I have become and yet I don't feel like the near-40 that I envisioned when I was younger.  Twenty years ago, I thought of 40 as being "old".  And by "old", I mean people who sit around talking about things they heard on NPR and worrying about mortgages and retirement and whether their children are getting a good education.  And by that definition, I guess I really am old.  Or maybe it's that I am an adult which at 20 was the same as being old. Yet as I approach the doorstep of a new decade, it's hard to imagine that I somehow let go of my youth and I refuse to admit to myself that maybe I'm not as young as I once was, or as young as I feel or want to be.  I remember when I was 12 and my mother turned 40.  Her friends threw her a huge surprise party and in my 12-year old mind, it never occurred to me that someday I would turn 40, too.  And maybe that's how all children are - disconnected with the concept of aging as if it's something that would surely never happen to them --  like being hit by a meteor.  When you're 12, 40 is light years away.  And yet, 28 years later, here I am looking 40 square in the eye.

I won't lie - I am sad to bid farewell to my 30s.  It's been a great decade and at the risk of sounding cliche, it's been life changing.  Ten years ago, I was planning my wedding and two months before I turned 30, Brian and I got married and jet-setted to Thailand for our honeymoon.  It was a grand entrance into my new milestone and I was excited by the prospects of this new decade, which have proven not to disappoint.  My 30s have been some of the best years of my life, but also the hardest.  If anything throws you into adulthood both quickly and suddenly, it is that of becoming a mother.  Growing a human being in your body and then very painfully extracting that human from your body is life changing no matter how you look at it.  And that's not even the hardest part.  If I've learned anything in my 30s, it's that having children changes everything.  Your life is no longer just yours.  Your time is dictated by these tiny little people whose needs interrupt your sleep or keep you up all night.  And these little people become your appendages wherever you go -- even the bathroom.  But I would not have wanted to spend my 30s in any other way.

There's so much I am thankful for as I embrace these last months of being 39. I am married to this amazing man who's equally devoted to raising our children, and who listens to my obsessions and has the most keen insight of any person I know.  He looks out for me and encourages me to take time for myself when I've spent many hours with two kids who've turned my hair gray and fried my nerves. And when the kids are in bed, we eat Ben and Jerry's together while watching Friday Night Lights and on occasion he will look over at me, smile tenderly and stroke my arm when some heartfelt scene brings tears to my eyes.  And while there is not a lot of glamour to schlepping kids to school and karate, or sitting at home on a Friday night watching TV with your spouse, there is a hell of a lot of satisfaction.

Now that I have nearly four decades behind me, I can say that I don't really feel old, but maybe just old-er.  The hair on my head no longer grows the black shade it grew 20 years ago and the body I once had no longer tolerates the calories and late-night meals it once did.  I miss that, but being old-er has given me a lot of wonderful lessons that being younger just didn't afford.  It's nice not to be held captive by my teenage insecurities, or the self-consciousness of my 20s. Being married and having kids has taught me invaluable lessons about compromise and the occasional sacrifice, and also about the richness and beauty of unconditional love.  I've learned that life is too short to be in toxic relationships and that the best relationships are the ones that repel high maintenance and drama - if being married or being friends with someone takes a lot of energy and work just to keep it above water, why bother?  I've learned that laughing is good therapy - as is Ben and Jerry's Dublin Mudslide.  I've learned that it is a blessing to have family nearby when you have children, and it is sad when they move away.  I've learned that even without taking classes, I can still learn new things like knitting or how to play Pachelbel's Canon on the piano. And I've learned that if I want to feel younger, I can turn on some hip-hop music or watch an hour or two of MTV and feel both envious and relieved that I'm no longer in that place.

So here's to 40! I will continue to feel sentimental about my 30s for the next few months, but come December I will greet 40 with the optimism it deserves.  Good, bad, or otherwise, aging happens to us all whether we like it or not.  So I will embrace it.  And if all else fails, I'll grab some Ben and Jerry's.

Presenting well

Grandma turned 94 last week.  "Can you imagine?" she exclaims when we remind her she's 94.  "I never thought I'd make it this far," she says in disbelief.  To which I respond, "Grandma, you're gonna outlive all of us."  She laughs and says, "you think so?"  And I do.

For Grandma, it's hard to figure out the longevity secret.  To my recollection, she never smoked, but she's had high blood pressure for decades and she was never one to exercise, watch her diet, or take a zen approach to a healthy lifestyle, especially with a pantry stocked with Vienna Sausages and Keebler Fudge Stripes Cookies.  Still, she's physically healthier than the majority of people her age, which I always find remarkable.  Whatever it is - good luck or good genes - she's got it.

I have observed there are downsides to being 94.  Grandma has had a steady decline in short-term memory for the past ten years and while she still lives on her own, she wouldn't be able to do so without the services of Total Longterm Care, a PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) provider.  She attends their adult day program six days per week and they send a nurse to her apartment every morning to administer her medications, which she cannot remember to take on her own.  My mother does her laundry and also makes sure she washes her hair and remembers to change her clothes.

I won't lie.  It's difficult to watch her get older.  When she was 80, I was living in Japan and I bought Grandma a ticket to visit me.  She came for a week and we traveled from Tokyo to Kyoto.  She maneuvered through the Japanese train system like she was 20 years younger and it was magical to hear her speak Japanese like a native, some 40+ years after her parents died.  It was her second and last trip to her parents' homeland and I will always look back on it with much fondness knowing we were able to share that history together.

The Grandma that visited me in Japan is not the same Grandma I know today.  These days, we have a routine where I pick her up once a week and she and the kids have dinner with my mom and step-dad.  We have the same conversation in the car ride to their house.  As soon as she gets in the car, she comments about how it's a good thing she's not driving even though she misses her car, and she repeats this statement at least three times during the 15 minute ride, each time as if she just then realized how difficult it would be for her to drive with her declining eyesight.  The car she speaks of is the one she totaled some 13 or 14 years ago after trying to turn left on a red light.  Grandma never drove like a "little old lady", but instead like a reckless teenage boy.  She had road rage before there was ever such a term and even when I was a kid, I distinctly remember her impatience at red lights and stop signs.  The accident that ended her driving career was most definitely a reflection of aging reflexes than anything else, but we were thankful that in spite of the severity of the accident, she and the person who ran into her were fine. Grandma often says, "I guess the big guy above must have been looking out for me."  But almost 15 years later, she's still missing that car and still talks about it as if she stopped driving last week.

When I called Grandma on her birthday, I asked her how her day was and she said it was great and that she'd just returned from dinner with a friend.  I asked her which friend and she paused and said, "oh gosh... I don't remember."  She also couldn't remember what she'd eaten with the friend whom she couldn't recall.  Brian, the kids and I took her out to sushi the next evening since the extended family was all out of town.  When we all gathered on Sunday after the whole family was back in town, it was pretty clear Grandma didn't remember much of our sushi meal three days earlier.

What's fascinating is that Grandma "presents well", as the staff of Total Longterm Care tells us.  When we took her out to sushi, I noticed she'd had a manicure and when I asked her about it, she said that the people at the senior center painted her nails as a special birthday activity.  She told my mother, however, that she went to the nail salon with her next door neighbor to get them done.  We will probably never know who gave her the manicure, and we've gotten used to the facts changing as Grandma's short-term memory repeatedly fails her, but both stories certainly "present well".

In spite of the memory loss and her higher level of dependency, Grandma still has a magnetic personality.  At the sushi restaurant, the wait staff immediately noticed the birthday card the kids made her and started asking her about it.  When she told them she was 94, they were in awe, telling her she looked so young and asking about her background. She flattered them right back telling them she could tell they weren't Japanese because they were "too good looking" (they were Mongolian).  By the end of the meal, Grandma had scored us a complimentary salad and a huge dessert plate of mochi ice cream and tempura green tea ice cream with the entire restaurant singing her "Happy Birthday".

I feel really lucky that at 38, I still have a living grandparent which is more than many people my age can say.  She is the only grandparent I have ever known and while the Grandma I knew 20 years ago is very different from the Grandma I know now, it warms my heart that she is able to see her great-grandchildren grow up.  I hope that if I make it to 94 that I present well and have a magnetic personality.  Shouldn't we all be so lucky? Happy Birthday, Grandma.

I wanna hold your hand

While it is rare, there are some aspects of parenthood that make me feel like someone's holding my hand and reassuring me that I do know what I'm doing even though much of the time, it feels like an endless improvisation. One validating force is our pediatrician. One thing I learned to look forward early on were the kids' "well-child" visits. At these appointments, the pediatrician measures how much each kid has grown, and I personally love asking any looming child development questions. It's one of the only times I get to calm my own neuroses on issues such as nosebleeds, bed wetting, and things I notice other kids doing (or not doing) that my kids aren't (or are) doing. Danny, our pediatrician who has undoubtedly heard it all, always reassures us that our kids are developing normally and I always leave his office with a feeling of serenity and even a little confidence that I do know what I'm doing. Danny saw our kids at 2 days old, two weeks, two months, four months, six months, nine months and 12 months. After that first year, the kids did three more "well child" visits between 12 and 24 months and after that, they did them every year -- until now.

Jacob had his six-year "well child" appointment in July. The appointment went fine, but I found out that at six, we've hit a new milestone because now our appointments are no longer annual. Jacob will not need to go back for a "well child" visit until he's eight, and now I'm feeling like the hand-holding is more or less over - even from our pediatrician.

Now Jacob has entered first grade. When I dropped him off at school on his first day, I knew this would be a whole new experience for all of us. In kindergarten, the kids meet on the north side of the playground and are secluded from the rest of the school, but in first grade, they meet on the south side with all of the big kids. When I picked him up from kindergarten last year, we met his class by the flagpole and had to sign our kids out on a clipboard before we could take them home. This year, Jacob gets a high five from his teacher at the end of the day and is sent on his merry way. I keep waiting for the day when his teacher does a fist bump and a "peace out", but maybe we'll look forward to that in second grade.

The reality is he's not a baby anymore. Sasha has one more year of preschool and the level of hand-holding and nurturing in preschool versus the "high five" approach of first grade is taking a bit of an adjustment on my end - and on Jacob's, too.

My challenge right now is helping Jacob balance the social aspects of first grade. Half of his classmates from kindergarten, including one of his best friends, are in the other first grade class and while he is mostly stoic about it all, he did admit to me last week that he doesn't have anyone to play with on the playground after he eats lunch. First he says to me, "I mostly just play by myself" and after asking him if he wants to play with other kids, he tells me he does, but that they're "too busy" when he approaches them. My heart sank as he burst into tears exclaiming, "I miss the fun of kindergarten!" I held him in my arms futilely trying to keep myself from crying while telling him that it might take some time, and trying to reassure him that he'll get used to it. Meanwhile, Sasha says to me, "I'll play with Jacob, mommy" which made my heart ache more as she shows such love and empathy for her brother.

I honestly don't know how you teach social skills to a first grader. From what I've observed in my minimal exposure to the first graders on the playground is that if you're a girl, you grab the hand of another first grade girl and you walk around aimlessly until the bell rings. It appears that boys and girls don't play with each other because they're at that "cooties" stage of development where kids split up by gender. If you're a boy, you either play ball on the playground, or you do some kind of super hero/cops & bad guys/Star Wars thing that ultimately involves a lot of running and chasing. Frankly, it's easy to see why Jacob is having a tough time finding his niche. The Silvermans are not a sports-minded family, thus gravitation towards anything sports-related would be highly unlikely. He's also never gotten into super heroes or any good guy/bad guy stuff and while he does enjoy a good chase now and again, he just doesn't possess a whole lot of aggression, or whatever it is that drives boys to run and chase.

At the end of the day, Jacob is doing just fine. As parents, part of our job is to worry endlessly about our kids and obsess about their health and well-being. We hate to see them sad and we worry about them struggling, but kids are resilient - more resilient than we give them credit. In spite of his lunchtime woes, Jacob has not once protested going to school and though I worried about it, he's already started to develop a lunchtime routine thanks to my girlfriend who casually mentioned to her first grade twins that Jacob may need a little extra TLC on the playground. I know I still have two more years of hand-holding with Sasha before she's thrust into the bigger world of first grade, and what I hope is that it comes later than sooner.

First Day of Kindergarten

Hard to believe it's been a year since I wrote this. And even as I read it again, I still tear up a little.

On Monday, my son starts full-day kindergarten and in a few short weeks my daughter begins her first year of preschool. While a huge part of me is looking forward to the freedom of having both children out of the house for the first time, it's hard not to feel like the hands of time are tugging on my heartstrings as I realize I am now turning the page of the last five years and entering a new phase of motherhood.
As a stay-at-home mom, it's difficult not to feel like some days pass like refrigerated honey - sticky and slow. Five years ago, as I held my infant son, I could not wrap my mind around the fact that he would someday be attending kindergarten. The 3 a.m. feedings and the feeling that my brain was made of cotton are still fairly fresh in my mind. Still even fresher are memories of caring for my infant daughter along with a two-year old and wondering if life could get any harder. We fill each day and each week with activities to keep our kids stimulated and ourselves sane, and then before our eyes, our babies turn to toddlers and then to preschoolers and suddenly we wonder where all the time went.

This year has felt particularly like a time warp. In January, my daughter was still in diapers, my son was still riding his little red tricycle, and motherhood felt fairly comfortable and stagnant as if I would be with this toddler and preschooler for many years to come. In half a year, though, I feel as if I skipped a few paragraphs of a story and suddenly my kids are unrecognizable. My daughter is 100% out of diapers, my son learned to ride a two-wheeler and our house is free of baby safety gates, sippy cups, high chairs, and all the other tools of babyhood. And just last week I discovered my son has a loose tooth and I swear it was only months ago that his chubby baby face was covered in drool from all the baby teeth he was cutting.

It's hard not to feel a bit melancholy over it all. This first week of school will be an adjustment for everyone. I'm so happy for my son, a little sad for me and my husband, and nearly heartbroken for my daughter who missed her brother when he was away at various day camps this summer. She would talk about him constantly as if talking and thinking about him would make him magically appear. "Jacob's favorite color is green, so I'm going to get him a green lollipop," she'd say, or "First we'll go to the grocery store and then we'll pick up Jacob?" she'd ask at 11 a.m. when we weren't scheduled to pick him up for another five hours. And I think the feeling was mutual because even when we'd pick him up at camp, it wasn't me he would run to first, but his sister whom he would hug tightly and kiss on the forehead.

Transitions are hard, there's no doubt. It's such a cliché to say that "it all goes so quickly"or that "they grow so fast", but after having children, I've found that it is nothing but true. Change really is the only constant and though I sometimes mourn it, I know it is futile to fight it. Like all things, we will adjust to this new chapter in our lives and I know we need to enjoy it while it lasts instead of mourn it when it's gone.

On Monday, my husband and I will accompany our son to his first day of kindergarten like so many other parents around the city. A girlfriend of mine is having a few of us over to her house afterward to commiserate with and comfort one another and to celebrate our big kindergartners. Perhaps some tears will be shed, but in the end, I am looking forward to this new chapter of motherhood. I just hope the next five years will have some of those sticky, slow honey-filled days.

Remembering Michael Jackson

At best he was eccentric, at worst a self-loathing pedophile. When I heard the news of Michael Jackson's death on Thursday, I was almost indifferent. The deep adoration I'd once had for the King of Pop over 25 years ago had grayed and faded particularly in the last 15 years when my memories of Michael Jackson bore zero resemblance to the celebrity he'd become. It was weird though. As I checked Facebook, the site became abuzz with news of his death and most of my friends, particularly my friends from high school, expressed shock and a certain amount of melancholy at his passing, and soon I was feeling the same way.

I've been commenting a lot since MJ's death about how amazing it is that music can conjure up so many memories. Michael and I go way back. I remember watching the 25th Anniversary Motown show on TV and seeing Michael's debut of the moonwalk while dancing in the basement with my mom and sister. When I was 12, my friend Jeremy (now Jeremiah) and I stood in line somewhere in downtown Denver for seven hours to get tickets to the Victory Tour. The concert took place at Mile High Stadium and in spite of all the waiting in line for tickets, Jeremy and I could very well have been halfway to Kansas from where we were sitting. To make things worse, the giant screen that was to display Michael's moves, blew down from high winds sometime during the beginning of the concert. It didn't matter though. In our 12-year old minds, we were in heaven.

I remember being introduced to Michael's music as a child. My sister had the "Off the Wall" album and while I was a little too young to appreciate pop music, I do remember "Rock with You" wafting through the speakers time and time again. What really hooked me, however, was the Jackson 5. That amazing falsetto voice and cherubic face was really the catalyst for what would later become my teenage obsession.

In middle school and high school, Michael Jackson was always a part of my life from "Thriller" to "We are the World" to "Bad". My friend Stephanie, who moved to Georgia after our sophomore year of high school, reminded me that I made her a mixed tape before she left that included "Man in the Mirror" along with lyrics from the song I felt were poignant to our friendship. Ah, to be 16 again! In college, I remember sitting with my roommates in our apartment watching MTV's debut of "Black and White" and thinking how amazing it was when they blended and morphed all those people's faces at the end.

I started losing touch with Michael right about the time he came on national TV to vehemently deny allegations of sexual abuse against a teenage boy. I just couldn't believe it was the same guy who sang "Billie Jean" a decade earlier at the Motown celebration. There was such a disconnect. The man who'd written the lyrics to "Heal the World" and other such altruistic songs had become a reclusive and seemingly lost man. And as the years rolled on, Michael only became more bizarre and unrecognizable and my adoration for him and his music had all but faded.

Michael Jackson's music undoubtedly left an amazing and important legacy. No one can deny his remarkable talent and he undoubtedly earned his King of Pop title. Since Michael's death, I have felt so much nostalgia. I am so thankful for the role his music played in my adolescent years and it's been fun remembering all of the connections I shared with friends surrounding his lyrics, his dancing and even his white, sequined glove. I hope that wherever Michael may be, that he is at peace and free from the demons that seemed to haunt him throughout his life. I downloaded a compilation of several of Michael's number one hits and burned a CD to listen to in my car. I guess this is my way of mourning his death, or maybe it's a fix for all of the nostalgia I've been feeling. But to quote one of his songs, I will do what he suggests: "Keep on with the force don't stop. Don't stop 'til you get enough."

Mamma Mia... Here I go again

Last summer, my friend Louise and I went to see the movie, "Mamma Mia" starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan. I have to confess that I've never been an ABBA fan and when I saw the movie, I only recognized two of the songs - "Mamma Mia" and "Dancing Queen". Meanwhile, Louise sang along to nearly every song in the movie and I could hear other people in the audience whispering the words, or singing very softly. It felt a little like going to someone's church and being the only one there unable to recite any of the prayers, or sing any of the hymns.

After seeing the movie, I realized that the words to ABBA songs are so simple and clear, which makes them so catchy. Perhaps part of me didn't want to be one of those people who couldn't sing along to the hymns, so I went home and downloaded the "Mamma Mia" soundtrack. I played the soundtrack in the car and the kids were instantly hooked. And now I can safely say that I will never feel inadequate should I ever see "Mamma Mia" in the movie theater, or on stage. Now that the movie is on DVD, my mother purchased a copy and the kids initially went to her house to watch it, but we've sinced borrowed said DVD and it's on at our house at least once a day.

It's hard for me to say that I love ABBA songs. In fact, if I never heard another ABBA song in my life, I'd be okay with it because the soundtrack has been played so many times in our house that I could very well see repeated play of the "Mamma Mia" soundtrack making the top ten list of "viable forms of torture". On the other hand, I am glad I got a video clip of the kids performing "Mamma Mia". I know in a few short years, my memory of them singing these songs will begin to fade and I don't know if there's anything cuter than Sasha playing with her little ponies on the living room floor and suddenly blurting out "You're so hot, teasing me..." or Jacob singing to his friends at lunch "If you change your mind, I'm the first in line. Honey, I'm still free. Take a chance on me." Even Brian has participated in the "Mamma Mia" frenzy by singing his own rendition of "Mamma Mia" entitled "Sopapilla" (or maybe it was just a coping mechanism).

Going Digital with Grandma

Grandma turned 93 this past March. It’s an impressive number in and of itself, and the fact that she still lives independently and walks around as if she’s a spritely 70-year old is all the more impressive. She still flirts with tall men telling them she wants to stand next to them so that she’ll be taller than her 4’9” frame in her next life. When my mother remarried last July, Grandma was up front by the stage dancing, drinking wine, and entertaining any wedding guest who walked by. She jokes, teases and laughs and still enjoys a good scotch every now and again.

On the flip side, there are these nonsocial moments that remind us that Grandma is aging. She suffers from dimentia and her short-term memory loss makes it a challenge to keep her safe while still living independently. In April, she enrolled full-time in a program called Total Longterm Care. I can't say enough about this program as they do everything possible to keep her independent. She attends their adult day program five days a week and they have someone drop by her place seven days a week to make sure she takes her medications. The program gives our family peace of mind and when I called TLC recently to find out how she's doing, I was told that Grandma especially enjoys the dance classes and practically leads the group.

Overall, Total Longterm Care is working out wonderfully for Grandma. Her dimentia is slowly becoming more pronounced and other plans will eventually need to be made, but for now she's safe and in good spirits. Our challenge now with Grandma is the digital TV conversion. Just last night, Brian and I were at an awards banquet when suddenly I hear my cell phone ring. It was Grandma. She'd called four times. When I got home, I discovered she'd called our home phone an additional four times and left two messages. I called her from the banquet and she was in a panic because her TV is no longer working. After realizing it's June 13th and the nationwide conversion from analog to digital television was scheduled to be complete as of June 12th, it all made sense.

For five months, we've been trying to make Grandma's TV “Grandma Friendly”. For at least a decade, Grandma has been watching TV like we did in the 70s. The remote control is lost, so she turns the TV on and controls the channels and volume using the buttons on the front of the TV. Up until the final digital conversion, this was working mostly fine for her. By mid-April, she was only getting a handful of channels, but she didn't seem to care.

We've made several attempts to help Grandma transition to digital. When the full conversion was threatening to happen in February, my mother purchased Grandma one of those digital converter boxes. While it would have been great to hook the converter up and let Grandma continue to use the buttons on the front of the TV, the TV needs to remain on channel 3 in order for the converter to work. Thus, our challenge has become teaching Grandma to use the remote control.

Since February, I've learned that Grandma is much craftier than we give her credit. In our first attempts at getting her to use the remote, Brian and I put duct tape over the buttons on the front of her TV and with a Sharpie, wrote in big block letters "DO NOT REMOVE" along with a sign that read "USE THE REMOTE CONTROL". We also placed masking tape next to the 'volume' and 'channel' buttons on the remote and told her those were the only buttons she needed to push. Eventually, we covered the entire remote with masking tape except for the 'volume' and 'channel' buttons thinking that would solve the problem. Within days, Grandma managed to unplug the converter, move it to another table, remove my sign, and remove the masking tape from the remote.

In an attempt to outsmart Grandma's craftiness, Brian found a TV remote called the "Slicker Clicker" produced by the KIS (Keep it Simple) Company. We immediately ordered one thinking this would be the answer as you can program the clicker to work on any device. The Slicker Clicker is awesome in that it has a power button, a knob for changing the channels and a knob for controlling the volume. One would think this would have solved all of our problems, but the knob for changing channels is very sensitive and requires you to turn it ever so slightly to switch channels. For those who've met Grandma, you know that she is a lovely person, but patience is not one of her strong fronts. Our theory is that Grandma was turning the knob too quickly and the TV would eventually get to a snowy channel so she would then start pushing more buttons (and removing signs and masking tape) until the TV worked. After visiting her place three times in three days to turn her converter back on and show her once again how to turn the channel knob slowly, my mom and I decided we'll just let her go back to her old ways until the full conversion.

So here we are post June 12th and Grandma phoning me eight times in an hour because the inevitable has occurred and she has no TV reception. We're headed to her place soon, armed once again with duct tape, a Sharpie and block-letter signage. Maybe this time we'll be able to outsmart a 93-year old, but somehow I think I'll be visiting her several times a week until she learns to use the remote - or until travel costs (and sanity) exceed the cost of just buying her a new TV with built-in digital.