Three Weeks and Two Days

Mollie turned three weeks old this weekend. It is such an enormous amount of time for her to have already been on the planet that I am struck by her age every time I murmur it to myself. I do not understand where the time went, how we made it from those moments when she was a few hours, and even a few days old, all the way up until now, when we can measure her lifespan in weeks. It seems unfathomable.

So it is an understatement to say that the last three weeks have been a blur. They have been a blink of the eye, one sleepless 24-hour stretch of breastfeeding, laundry, spit-up, teeny tiny clothes, thank you notes, and learning, OH, the learning.

This is a short list of some of the things I have learned in the last three weeks:

• When your milk comes in, it feels prickly.
• When your daughter is as perfect and tiny as ours is, people will always tell you how perfect and tiny she is, and you will have no idea how to respond. You will say, "thank you" as though you can take credit for her smallness and her perfection.
• Exhaustion can be manageable, as long as you're tag-teaming, and as long as there is coffee.
• Bottles and pacifiers won't cause her any real confusion, contrary to the teachings of the well-meaning, but slightly overwhelming, La Leche League.
• Dr. Internet is much more knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to breastfeeding tips than she was during pregnancy.
• Whenever anyone offers to help you through the first three weeks of parenting, the correct answer is, "yes, thank you!"

I hardly know how to describe how amazing our little girl is. She makes this face sometimes, eyes wide open, bright, and staring, her mouth a perfect little "o", her hands clasped in front of her, and it literally makes my heart hurt, I love it so much. I want to consume the image, eat it so as to make it wholly mine.

"It's crazy to think that she will never be this age again, that next week she will make new faces, new gestures, totally different expressions for us," Matt says. And I want to burst into tears for how sad it is that the time is literally flying by and that she is growing so quickly, and I want to jump up and down for joy, sky-write to the world about how incredibly lucky we are to have this healthy little girl we get to raise, how amazing it is that she is growing so quickly.

When I hear Mollie crying in another room, I know exactly what face she is making based on the sound of her cry. I love having that knowledge, love being one of the few people in the world who knows that about her. It is so intimate.

I spend a lot of time thinking about motherhood, things I have thought of only fleetingly over the years. I think about women in the Holocaust, unable to breastfeed their children because they were starving themselves. I grieve for those women, I grieve for the pain it must have caused them to know that they were unable to nourish their babies. I think about women who have lost their children, and I hold Mollie closer, kiss her soft head, tell her that I cannot imagine my world without her in it. I think about trying to keep Mollie safe, trying to give her good advice. I realize that I am not as cool as I thought I would be: I do not want her to try drugs and have lots of sex; I do not want her to hurt her body because it is too precious to me. I think about the fact that I have a little girl, that I was once a little girl. I think about being a mother and I think about my mother.

Late at night, I think about sleep.

This weekend our families will be in Boston for Mollie's baby naming. We will formally welcome her into the world as a member of the Jewish community. The ceremony itself is beautiful, a gesture of our commitment to raise her as a Jew, in the likeness of both her fore-mothers and the two amazing women for whom she was named. But more than the ceremony is the fact of her existence, that we have a daughter to welcome, that we have family who have new, never-before-experienced roles like Aunt, Uncle, Grandparent. We will all come together for the ceremony because of this one teeny little girl, this yet-unwritten beauty. I am struck, over and over again, by how different my world is now, how grateful I am for the change, and how quickly one little person can touch so many people.

The Long Goodbye

I have been thinking about today for 15 years. Along the way I've thought of many other things, and I've had days and weeks and months of not thinking about today at all. But it didn't sneak up on me, not even for a moment. No, today has been with me every day since January 9, 1994.

"It's over," I wrote in my journal that day, my 15-year-old self every bit as dramatic and heartbroken as the 30-year-old who writes this. I was talking about the hell of watching my mother die. I was talking about the exhaustion of doing my homework from a chair next to her hospital bed, and the fear of giving her the seizure medication too late, and the desperate attempts to be a normal teenager while balancing a schedule that included spending all of my free time at Albert Einstein Medical Center. I don't know what I thought would be different after she died, but I did know that I was ready to release myself from all of those things, from the hospital and the pills and the balancing act.

But the fact remained that my mother was dead. And that unlike so many of my friends who were just starting to realize that their parents were real people, I was faced with the reality that my mother could only live on in my memory. Starting tomorrow, then, my memory of mother outlives her presence in my life. Tomorrow, my mother will have been dead for fifteen years and a day, and I only knew her for a mere fifteen years.

***
I picture myself at the bow of a big ship, holding my arms out to the world, titanic-style. I see myself surrounded by white light, offering my outstretched palms to the sky. There is a freedom that comes with today, with letting the past be the past, and the future be the future. I cannot put it into better words, and that is good, because I feel terribly terribly guilty about the freedom. And I also feel terribly terribly sad.

There are so many memories in the last fifteen years, memories that I wish my mother could have been in. I wish I could picture her at my college graduation, taking pictures and meeting my friend's parents. I wish I could remember the excitement in her voice when I called from Mexico to tell of my engagement. I wish I could remember that funny time in the wedding dress shop when she got angry and walked out of the store because I couldn't decide between an ivory-colored veil or a champagne-colored veil. I wish we could reminisce about those horrible mornings spent doing my hair as a kid, or those car rides to and from ballet. I wish she knew Matt, and Julie, and Evan. I wish she knew me.

And that's the thing: I think that she does. I do, I really do. I think of my mother as a continuous presence in my life, a fact that today doesn't erase. But today does change something. In my head, there's a difference between today and tomorrow.

***
I woke at 4:40am today as I do every year on this date. I didn't think I would this year, I thought that it would start off differently. But no, I woke at 4:40, just about the same time that we got the phone call fifteen years ago. I don't have to think too hard to hear my father or Andy crying. Or picture our house full of our friends and family. Or visualize the funeral home. I am moments away from those memories. And yet they were fifteen years ago.

But I have to work to remember those mornings spent doing my hair, and those car rides to ballet. I have to work to remember them because I can't reminisce about them. My mother and I have no stories that we have told so many times that we can finish them for each other. I have only the stories I that I have told, over and over again, creating a lifetime of memories with my mother from ten good years of conscious thinking with her in my life. It is amazing what ten good years can give you.

I think that I know my mother, that I know who she was and what she was like, how she viewed the world. I worry that I put her into a mold that would feel uncomfortable for her to actually inhabit, that I have made her larger than my own life just so I can keep her in it. But the worry doesn't keep me up at night. I love the mother that my mother is for me.

***
I have been experiencing this day in my head for so long that I needed to experience it out loud. I was fifteen when I realized that I would still be so young when today came around. And at the other end, at thirty, as I re-read my journal entries written in my fifteen-year-old voice, I think to myself that we never really change. I have spent fifteen years - half of my life - thinking about today. And as when I was fifteen, now that it's here, I just want to spend today thinking about today, assured in the knowledge that tomorrow is tomorrow.

Things that Make Me Saner

Immediately after I wrote that post about being at that bad place with the bar exam, a few things happened. First, things got worse. (That's always the way, isn't it?) I had a crying breakdown to Julie over gmail chat, wherein I sat typing in all of the reasons that I was such a mess. In case you're curious, typing down all of the reasons that you're feeling batshit insane isn't necessarily the best way to make yourself less so. You're just confronted with your insanity in black and white, and by your own hand, and you feel more absurd and yet strangely less able to do anything about it. But Julie calmed me down by reminding me that it's just a day, and that my only goal was to get through the day before I could move on to worrying about the next day, or the intervening days between then and test day. And then I felt better because she was being so reasonable and calm and normal.

I felt better right up until later that day when some perv walked into the library and started touching himself in plain sight of me. I shit you not. There are actually people who think that kind of behavior is okay, people who walk into public libraries, libraries full of sweet little children, and touch themselves because they are perverted sick bastards. And that was about the time I remembered why I'm doing what I'm doing, that in the end, law is a way to keep pervs like that guy off of the street, out of your library, and away from your kids. Dude, law can help and so can I!

And then I had another breakdown. But then, THEN I got a phone call from one friend and an email from another, both of whom have been here before, both of whom have taken this test, who know how positively soul-destroying it can be. It helps that both of these women are the kind of women whose advice and counsel I respect and seek out. And even though I listened to their words and thought, "but they don't know how little I know about Commercial Paper," I started to see that there was some light at the end of the tunnel. And I actually started to remember what I feel like when I'm not taking the bar exam. Except, of course, that we ate pie for dinner last night. That's still not normal.

Every day this week I've been studying in the Lexington Library, right down the street from where Matt works. It gets me up and out of the house in the morning, plus it keeps me on Matt's schedule, which is good, because if I was left to my own devices I'd study between the hours of midnight and noon, instead of the other way around. Because we're in such close proximity, I've had the chance to meet Matt for lunch. Monday was a shared salami sub, Tuesday we tried the Indian restaurant in Lexington, Wednesday we had caprese salad and tuna fish, Thursday we went to the Japanese/Chinese restaurant (don't ask), and today we're meeting for chicken sandwiches. Every single meal has been tailored to my bizarre and unreasonable cravings, cravings that occasionally (read: usually) change in between the time that I voice them and the time I'm eating, so that I'll get to a restaurant and stare at a menu for 10 or 12 minutes, wondering what on earth I'll do if I order the sushi box when in the end I really want chicken and broccoli, oh the choices are so overwhelming! It's tough, I know. But lunch with Matt is the absolute highlight of my day, the very best and most indulgent moment that I allow myself at this point in the process. We talk about anything but the bar exam, and we spend a few minutes lamenting the fact that we'll have to give up our midday lunch dates when the exam is over and I'm (presumably, hopefully, please oh please!) working.

The past two nights I've come home to care packages. These care packages are full to the brim with items that will surely rot my teeth, but that also make me extremely thankful that I have friends and family who love me enough to help me rot my teeth. You know you're doing well when your peeps basically send you a message that says, "of COURSE you're going to pass the bar exam. And when all of your teeth fall out, we'll STILL think you're a fantastic lawyer and a pretty great friend/sister-in-law. Although, we will then reserve the right to encourage you to find a dentist. But we'll do it gently, and with love." From the very bottom of my toothless grin, I love you guys. Thanks for thinking of me.

So it's just four wee little days before the exam and even though I had a mental breakdown in the car today (nothing to do with the test, no, this one was all about why I didn't just become a saxophone teacher, nevermind the fact that I've never even held a saxophone in my life. Sure, Lizzi, it had NOTHING to do with the exam.), I'm feeling mostly alright. I mean, I'm surrounded by a mountain of candy, I've got lunch to look forward to, and there are pervs in my library. I can feel it already: it's going to be an exciting four days! But seriously this time, I'm doing alright. I mean, it IS going to be an exciting four days, but after these four days and then those excruciating two days of the exam, it will all be over. And then my biggest concern will be the future of my dental hygiene.

Because She Helped Me To Like Scallops

Hello Internet! Remember back when we were on the trip and we'd write up birthday messages for the people whose birthdays we didn't get to celebrate because we were halfway around the world? Well we've stopped that feature since we've been home because we're, you know, HOME to actually celebrate people's birthdays. But there are some people in our lives who we think deserve to have their birthday blogged about, who we love so much that we just can't contain what we have to say about them.

Which brings me to the subject of this post. Our favorite Cris turned 30 last week and she was out of town and away from the internet (oh, the horror!). So I waited to post this until today, when I know she'll be at work and bored out of her mind. I actually wrote this post while we were gone, because when you're thousands of miles away from your friends and family, it's nice to write about them because they feel closer somehow. (For those of you out there whose birthdays have already passed who are wondering where YOUR birthday posts are, hang tight, I WILL get them to you, I promise.) But, without further ado, a birthday tribute to Cris:

Julie sent me some pictures of the little one today, and as I stared at the pictures of this beautiful baby girl in her little red hat, ready to be loved and adored by her family at Easter, it occurred to me just how much I miss that little one and her family. I only met little-C once, back when she was a wee little one-month-old, but those few moments spent holding her were perfect and precious. She looked like her father to me then, but today, looking at those pictures of her smiling in her red hat, I saw her mom's bright and pretty eyes smiling back at me, her mouth the same happy grin of Cris's. And it just about melted my heart.

I met Cris sometime early on in college. Our paths crossed and doubled back over each other through student life and Scotch n' Soda, winding its way over mutual friends and experiences. We really met through J, and for the first three years of our friendship we danced around each other, not entirely sure how we felt about each other, probably suspecting that we could be friends, but not entirely sure how to get there from here.

But all of that changed one week in March during our senior year. It was spring break and it was New Orleans, hot and muggy and drunk and antiquated, New Orleans. We literally ran into Cris and J and their merry gang of spring breakers on the street, and if you've ever been to New Orleans, you know what a surprise it is to run into someone you know. "Wait," you think to yourself, "YOU like this much debauchery too?!" And then you laugh and get a daiquiri and several hours later you've realized that duh, of COURSE you both like this much debauchery, and perhaps you should get married and have little debaucherous children together. And another daiquiri.

Cris's feet were badly sunburned, and when I say badly, I'm grossly underestimating the pain that she was in. AIR caused her pain, they were THAT sunburned. It hurt my feet to look at her feet. And yet there she was, walking around Bourbon street, drinking and laughing and having a good time. And all at once, somewhere between the time she and a few others went to watch a sex show, but before I showed my boobs off to a balcony of leering men, it occurred to me that Cris was one of the coolest women I'd met in a long, long time, and that if J continued to be an idiot about her, I'd have to beat him up.

Fast forward a few years and a few weddings and a few different cities and here we are. Over the years Cris has become someone who is a true-blue friend. Which is to say that she'd beat up anyone who had anything bad to say about me; she loves Matt fiercely and protectively (which I know because she almost always laughs at his jokes, even the truly terrible ones); and she silently suffers with worry about where we are in the world, following our itinerary to the letter, keenly aware of whether or not we're in harm's way.

In the past few months we've had a lot of time to think about our upcoming move to Boston. We keep saying over and over again that one of the best things about living in Boston will be that we'll have the chance to watch little-C grow up, that we'll get to be a part of her life almost from the very beginning. But we've also spent a lot of time talking about the fact that in addition to the little one, we'll get to watch her parents grow up too, that we get to be a part of their lives almost from the very beginning too. Because Cris came into my life at a time when I was still figuring out what it meant to be an adult, and while at the time it meant flashing a group full of strangers for a strand of shiny, plastic beads, it now means a lifetime full of wonderful meals, ordinary treasures, good jokes and bad jokes, and watching our families become grown-ups together.

Happy 30th birthday, Crissy. I promise that you're only as old as you feel. And if it makes any difference, there's a part of you that will always be just 21 to me.

love,
lizzi and matt

Aboard the Animal Train

We sit around the table, talking at the same time, each person's voice answering someone else's question, commenting on another's thought. It is a conversation punctuated by laughter, by loud, raucous guffaws, by bursts of bright and glorious hysteria, and I look across the table to see Matt laughing so hard that his eyes scrunch into tiny little slits with wrinkles at the side as he nods his head up and down, up and down, chortling into the hand clenched into a fist at his mouth, which is wide and grinning. Cris has to excuse herself to pee, because when you laugh so hard that you have to pee, and you've already had to pee for about 20 minutes, you know that if you sit at a table for another moment, you will surely wet yourself.
**
We wake up bright and early to the sound of the baby's cries. We're not used to it, those of us who are not yet parents, and particularly those of us who prefer to use our weekends catching up on sleep. But when I stumble into the living room, my hair a wild mess, and see the little one on the floor, toys already in her mouth, I feel my un-caffeinated self softening a little, waking up by the sheer energy of the amazing little person I'm seeing first thing in the morning. "Don't worry," her father assures her, "Lizzi doesn't talk first thing in the morning. She'll be nice again in a minute." After I brush my teeth and wash my face, I come out of the bathroom and the little one smiles up at me again, hopeful that I will smile back. And I do. And then she lunges for Julie, giggling as she grabs fistfuls of her hair and pulling her towards her so that she can gum on her face with her two shiny new teeth.
***
I'm in the kitchen now, cooking pasta, chopping vegetables, marinating meat that will later spend some time and then, whoops, it's not done yet!, more time on the grill. "What are we doing in here, hmmm?," Adam moos at me. "London broil. Orzo Salad. Green Beans and Tomatoes," I respond. "Me likes," Adam assures me. I smile as I turn towards my artichoke hearts, waiting to be cut into bite-sized pieces and tossed with parsley and kalamata olives. "Grab me one," Katy calls out to Geoff and he responds in kind, equal parts affectionate and gross, grabbing a beer out of the cooler for himself and Katy. They sit around the table, feeding the baby, keeping the beer bottles out of her reach, talking about talking about talking, and I cook.
****
We wander into a restaurant in Provincetown, ready to stretch our legs after the hours and hours of traffic heading east. But none of us want to be there, none of us are interested in the overpriced menu, or the food that doesn't sound appealing. So we leave, packaging up the baby and grabbing our bags, and head out to the street, where some of us search for good pizza, others of us eating fried seafood and sandwiches. Adam, who snacked too much on the way down, is hungry for none of it. We are not surprised, we probably all have the same thought that's running through my own head: "that's Adam!" We wander around the town, smiling in the direction of Ellie and the overly tanned and muscled men, thinking that we're all tired and zonked, wondering how J and Cris do it day after day with the little one. We find ourselves in a cool little store and J is impulsive and it makes us all feel a little bit giddy for him and for Cris. They are exceptionally nice watches.
*****
We have been around the world, I think to myself as I watch Matt sleeping. We have been to corners of the earth that we will never see again. "A lot has changed in a year," Matt remarks. And he is right. A lot HAS changed in a year. But here we are, back again, back with each other, back where I cook and Geoff is ridiculous, where Adam eats snacks and Katy talks about artsy things we don't understand. Back where we would give anything, anything at all to know what Julie has to say about us, where J and Cris have done the most amazing thing imaginable and brought this new little creature into our circle, into our lives. We are back in the best part of our world, the part where our family knows us, wants nothing more than to be with us and make fun of us, where we always know we have a place to call home.

It's a Small World After All

Posted from Siem Reap, Cambodia

Wow! I can't believe all of the comments and emails. I'm completely overwhelmed. In a good way. Thank you to everyone who emailed, commented on the blog, wrote on my wall, or called. It really made having my birthday on the other side of the world feel a lot closer to home.

I also have to thank Lizzi. She came clean to me yesterday, telling me that she's rallied the troops to help me celebrate my birthday, and I couldn't be more grateful. She has always been amazing in making my birthday mean so much more than I think it is. It is one of the reasons I love her as much as I do. I love you, sweets!

Here's how I celebrated my 30th birthday. First, we slept in late and ate a huge breakfast, complete with pancakes, bacon, and cold cereal with milk. Milk! I haven't had actual milk in over a month. It's just not something that's easy to come by here. Then, we hopped in a car and visited the temples of Angkor Wat. Unbelievable! We walked on temples that are over 1,000 years old. In fact, one of the temples was abandoned 60 years before Columbus stumbled upon America! There are pictures, I promise. After touring the temples, we came back to the hotel and went swimming, stopping for a drink or two at the swim-up bar. Swimming. In January! I've never gone swimming on my birthday before. Growing up, I was always a little jealous of the summer birthday kids and their pool parties, but no longer. Because I went swimming on my birthday. Did I mention that I went swimming in January?!

We ended the evening with dinner. Lizzi had planned on us going out for fancy meal on the town -- Western or Khmer, whatever I wanted. But it didn't quite turn out that way. By the time we'd finished swimming and rinsed the chlorine off, the hotel's restaurant was closed and the hotel shuttle was no longer running to town. So we ordered room service. I ordered a big burger, my first one of the trip, which is quite a testament to will power and restraint on my part, as well as a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, my first taste of the coveted Blue Label ever. And it was spectacular! I've got to say that traveling in southeast Asia definitely has the perk of cheap top-shelf liquor.

All in all, this was one of the best birthdays I've ever had. Again, thanks to everyone, and especially thanks to Lizzi.

Why We Chose Laos

Posted on our last day in Chiang Mai, Thailand

It was over 15 years ago that I first learned about Laos. My mom, a guidance counselor at Central High School (255!), was assigned to the students whose last names began with the letters "Gr" all the way through those whose last names began with "Lao." I will never forget the piles and piles of recommendations she painstakingly put together for her students, the hours she spent at our dining room table stuffing envelopes and contemplating the higher education choices of her students, or the fact that many of her students were originally from Southeast Asia, and had, through some combined miracle of fate and really hard work, made their way to Central.

When I was about 12-years-old, my mom had a student who truly tugged at her emotional heartstrings. Kaoli was 15, a sophomore in high school, Hmong, and engaged to be married. While Kaoli expressed interest in pursuing a career in nursing, family and culture dictated otherwise, and Kaoli was instead intending to drop out of school so that she could have a baby. My mother worked tirelessly to persuade Kaoli's parents to let her continue with her high school education, and for a time, my mom's best efforts prevailed. Kaoli continued to see my mother, and even at that age, I knew that they had a bond that went beyond a counselor-counselee relationship. It was one of the few of those bonds my mother made with her students of which I wasn't jealous, and I curiously sought out time with Kaoli every time I went to visit my mom at school.

One year, Kaoli invited our entire family to attend a Hmong celebration. It might have been New Year's, it might have been another festival, I honestly don't remember. But I remember that everyone marveled over the curliness of my hair, and generally made me feel welcome amidst a sea of people whose language I did not understand. It was the first time I was immersed completely in another culture, and while I remember feeling nervous about feeling so different, I can still close my eyes and see the colors of the clothes that the Hmong women wore, and the smell of the food I'd never before eaten.

Kaoli ended up transferring from Central to a high school in Detroit, where her husband's family moved sometime during her junior year. She kept in touch with my mother for a time, but they lost touch when my mom got sick. Through her few remaining connections to Philadelphia and Central, she learned of my mother's death and sent a touching note to our family. She didn't become a nurse, after all, but she had two healthy and beautiful children, and I couldn't help but smile at their picture, one which I still have, tucked away in box somewhere.

It is fitting then, that on January 9, 2008, fourteen years to the day that my mother died, I will be setting foot in Northern Laos for the first time. Matt and I planned to be in Laos for this anniversary, and the timing has worked out in our favor. We will be in a country that my mother, purposefully or not, introduced me to. We will visit a place that made an indelible impression on my young self, a place that perhaps helped to inspire my desire to learn about new cultures and new foods and new people, even before I could properly locate it on a map.

While spending this annivesary in Laos is really quite different from the way I usually mark this date, it feels totally appropriate for this time in my life. I think that in some small way my mom would be happy to know where I was, and that she may even be there with me, smelling the smells, experiencing the colors, right alongside us.

So it is with these memories in my heart that I set out for our three-day journey to Laos today. Thailand has been wonderful and beautiful and spiritual in ways that I can't quite even begin to grasp. And starting tomorrow, I will have a whole new country to absorb, to soak up, and to experience from every angle.


** The spelling of Kaoli's name was wrong in my original posting. Many thanks to Harriet, who remembered the proper spelling and emailed to let me know that she had a dream where she could see my mom's papers with Kaoli's name on them. I can't quite explain how grateful I am that Harriet has dreams like that, but it makes me feel amazing to know that there are people in the world who are still so very connected to my mom.

Happy Birthday Elissa

Tomorrow is my sister-in-law's 30th birthday. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to get internet tomorrow, so she's going to have to accept our very early halfway-around-the-world birthday wishes.

She seems relatively nonplussed by the fact that she's turning 30, but we think birthdays are something worth celebrating, something worth getting excited over, even though we agree that age is just a number. So even if she's nonplussed, we're, uh, plussed, so we're sharing the good news with you.

For those of you who don't know her, Elissa has accomplished quite a lot in her 30 years. She's a doctor, for starters, and while she was in med school, she was so spectacular that she was inducted into the "smartest kids in med school" honor society and she spent a year healing sick kids in Bolivia. She's also married to my brother, which anyone (even Andy) will admit is no small feat for a modest 30 years.

What you might not know is that it was Elissa who initially helped Matt and I catch the travel bug. Back in spring of 2000, passing notes back and forth in that joke of a religion class that we took together, Elissa suggested that since Matt and I couldn't afford to do the backpack around Europe thing for longer than two weeks, that we should take a trip around the US instead. In Matt's truck. For 5 long weeks. And thus the spark for travel was ignited, and Matt and I DID take that trip, and miracle of miracles we did not kill each other, and we even got married, and are now on this other, bigger trip, saying happy birthday from halfway around the world. It may sound cliche to say it, but I love being able to look all the way back to the beginning of something, so for me it's a no-brainer: if Elissa had never suggested that first big trip, I might not be sitting here today, watching Matt read a book on Hinduism while the Andaman Sea quietly rolls around in the background.

So for all of those reasons and more, Happy (Early) Birthday, Liss! We wish you a wonderful next 30 years, and then another 30 after that, and then at that point, it's totally your call! May you have good health, big happinesses, and lots of journeys ahead of you.

Catching My Breath

Today as I was driving to meet my sister-in-law, I suddenly and surprisingly found myself thinking about my mother. Sunday was her birthday, and she would have been 65-years-old. I didn’t feel much sadness on Saturday, which is my brother’s birthday, and I didn’t feel particularly sad on Sunday either. Matt and I spent Sunday walking around Pittsburgh in the beautiful fall weather, talking about our trip, and it was a very good day.

But on that walk, Matt asked me what my mom would think of our travels, and I was stumped, lost, totally without an answer.

“I think she,” I began but stopped. “She would say, uh.” Nothing. “I think she’d think it was cool, but I think she’d be worried for us,” I concluded without much conviction.

Matt chuckled, noting that from everything I’d told him about my mother, he thought I would say with conviction that she would be thrilled for us. And she would be, I assured him, but I went on to say that I think that maybe when you become a mother, you reserve the right to feel afraid when your children decide to take off for a jaunt around the world. Matt determined that this was fair. I laughed. And the conversation ended. We moved on to something else, and I didn’t really give it a second thought until today.

Today as I was driving to meet Amanda, I was thinking about a friend’s recent wedding. I was thinking about the fact that her mother, out-of-the-blue, paid for me and the other attendant to get our hair and makeup done on the day of the wedding. The memory made me smile because this friend’s mother is not the kind who you expect to do that kind of thing. And as I was thinking about it, I was suddenly transported to the day of my own wedding, when I was at the salon getting my hair and makeup done. In my memory of that moment as I thought about it today, it was as though my mother was there with me, paying for her daughter and their friends to look beautiful for the pictures. It was as though it really happened because in my mind’s eye, I could see it exactly as it would have happened. We would have all finished up at around the same time, and as we reached into our wallets, my mom would have said that she’d already taken care of everything. As we walked out of the salon, I would have assured her that she didn’t have to do that. And even though she and my father would have by that point spent a small fortune on my wedding, and even though she would have known that my friends expected to pay for themselves, she would have smiled at me and told me that she wanted to, that I shouldn’t worry about it. She would have done it because she was the kind of mother who did that kind of thing.

I can’t explain why this vision was so poignant for me. I can’t even quite figure out why it caught me so completely off guard. I think that it has something to do with her birthday, with the fact that sometimes sadness hits us when we least expect it, when we wistfully think that maybe the window for sadness has passed unopened. But I think, finally, and with some conviction, that Matt was right: my mother would be excited for us to take this trip; she would applaud our adventurous spirits, make us promise to take lots of pictures, and to take great care of each other. I also think, finally, and with some conviction, that I was right, that she would have reserved the right to feel worried about us. What struck me most about my memory today, my memory of a time that never even existed as it existed for me today, is that her love for both of us, even for the man she never got the chance to meet, would have helped to bolster us through whatever hard times lay ahead and would have helped to assure us that doing this trip really is the right thing for us to do right now in our lives. It’s strange, I know, but today there is a part of me that wants to tell her that I get it, that I love that I can have memories of her in places where she didn’t actually exist, that I treasure all of my memories, the real ones and the imagined ones, and that while I can never erase a mother’s worry, Matt and I will take lots and lots of pictures, and we will certainly take great care of each other.

Don't Drink The Water

Every single time we go on a trip, my dad starts sending warnings of what we should avoid, oh, about 4 months before we go. It's sweet and endearing, and I like it, because it's really nice to know that someone looks out for me that way. His advice is usually pretty spot-on, because he reads about a million health newsletters a day, and because he's generally knowledgable about global politics and war-torn nations. I don't always take the advice, but I always listen to it, and when we're on that trip, I can hear his voice in the back of my mind, warning me against being too friendly, too optimistic, too American, too vulnerable.


By way of example, when Matt and I went on the cruise to Cancun, it wasn't long after the September 11th attacks, and my dad became solidly convinced that our ship, OUR SHIP!, was the very next target of terrorism. He managed to convince me too, albeit briefly, and for a few days I contemplated asking Matt if we could change our plans. We didn't change our plans, and we got engaged on that boat, and we came back in one piece, sans food poisoning to boot.


When Julie and I went to Ireland, even though we had no plans of going to Northern Ireland, my dad spent a good 30 minutes on the phone with me, explaining the long-standing conflict between Ireland and the UK, warning me that "Lizzi, this is serious. Do NOT go there. Promise me." I promised, and we didn't even go much farther North than Dublin (mainly because we didn't have enough time) and we came back in one piece. Also? We ate no beef while we were there, just in case.


This trip is different. It's bigger. There are a bunch of countries to worry about. There are millions of people, literally the world-over, who could harm me, according to my dad. I don't know why he lets himself worry so much, but I think it's something that he can't turn off, now that he's been a parent for over 35 years. Today I got the first official "Don't Drink the Water" memo. There've been other, verbal warnings, along the lines of "be careful in India because you don't want to offend people." Or, "maybe you shouldn't let people know that you're Jewish." Or even, "please don't eat chicken in southeast asia. Only vegetables. COOKED vegetables because you're going to get sick from the water. Oh honey, don't drink the water."


Today's warning was an actual article. The first of many, I'm sure. It was about a really disgusting-sounding parasite in Thailand. The parasite, fluke, works its way into freshwater fish, which are then ingested by humans, who get the parasite and find themselves at an increased risk of developing liver cancer. LIVER CANCER! He didn't have to tell me twice that "it's serious stuff." I got that from the Liver Cancer part of the article. You only get the parasite if you eat the fish raw, and there's a special dish in Northern Thailand that we should avoid. So basically, in Southeast Asia, we are being warned to eat only vegetables. COOKED vegetables. And fish that comes from the ocean that's also completely COOKED and not even a little bit raw. Got it. Cooked vegetables. Really cooked fish. No water. No chicken.

Should be a good time!