Change of A Dress

One recent Friday, Mary Katherine wore Emma’s favorite dress from last summer to her out-of-uniform day at school. The next day, Angie wore Mary’s new black-and-white dress to her graduation and all-night party. Also that night, Mary Katherine’s friend Sulia wore Angie’s dress from homecoming to her prom. The next day, Emma wore Mary Katherine’s new flowered dress to a graduation party, then drove home by 6:15 so Mary Katherine could change immediately into the dress for a party she was attending that evening. Emma changed clothes, handed over the frock, and went back to her party, having dropped by home just for the garment hand-off.

This sort of activity is a fairly regular occurrence here in the People’s Republic of Womenswear, a classless and stateless society with free access to all articles of wearable consumption. Marx would be so proud, although he would probably disapprove of the amount of leg these girls display as somehow not in keeping with proletarian standards.

Perhaps Marx would observe that it’s because these girls have ready access to cheap goods (thanks to Everyday People and Savers), but it’s certainly true that they don’t engage in a capitalistic insistence upon private ownership. Clothes, accessories and shoes are freely offered up to siblings and visitors; and I often come upon a guest preparing to leave our house in an entirely different ensemble than the one in which she arrived. Olivia, who is frequently the recipient of largesse from the Mary Katherine Lending Library of Fashion Finds, will often show up for a visit with a large sack of previously borrowed items that she’s returning. Mary Katherine loves this, since she’s usually forgotten about the stuff by then, and says it feels just like Christmas.

My children's friends, I find, have a much better working knowledge of their possessions than I do. I was recently working at home when I received a phone call from Olivia, on her way to school.  “I need a bowler hat and a silver glove for a Michael Jackson skit at the talent show today,” she informed me. “They’re in Mary Katherine’s closet, top shelf, left side. Leave them in a bag on the front porch.”  (The make it snappy was implied, not actually spoken). Doubtful, I rummaged around where she’d told me to look, and sure enough, there was the stuff. I would have sworn an oath that we didn’t own any silver gloves, so it’s a good thing that the People’s Republic of Minneapolis doesn’t require inventory-related oaths from citizens, especially where matters of costuming are concerned.

Angela is departing for Rome in just a few weeks. Emma will be spending next year studying in Beijing. I wonder what next year will bring, when the pool of borrowables shrinks dramatically. When I find Mary Katherine schlepping around the house in my oft-mended and way-too-big-for-her yoga pants, I’ll know she’s truly desperate to wear something, anything, that doesn’t belong to her. Power to the people, Comrade Mary Katherine.

My Year of Linking In: 415 Connections and Counting

Last spring, I attended a social media presentation whose topic was “Making the Most of LinkedIn.”  The speaker insisted that anyone who had fewer than 200 connections in their network was not even close to using the service appropriately.  

Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, I thought. Here I was, feeling way ahead of the game, because I had posted an updated resume and a business-appropriate photo (taken by my daughter, but still). But with only about a hundred contacts (give or take a few relatives and some old bosses who might, I feared, be dead), I felt inadequately linked and utterly underachieving.

While I remain unmoved by the charms of Facebook, which I’ve joined only to spy on my teenagers, I am appreciative of the promise of LinkedIn. The no-nonsense format delivers updates on the stuff I care about, and the data that is delivered – schools attended, places worked – can be just as informative in a shorter span of time than 700 profile pictures on someone’s Facebook page.

LinkedIn reminds me of my hometown, a place where the first question asked upon meeting someone socially was, “Where did you go to school?” In this case, it always meant high school, and the answer, most of the time, could peg someone geographically, socially and demographically, all with one short answer.

After learning from that presentation that I was a woefully underperforming LinkedIn-er, I decided to challenge myself. I vowed to become a LinkedIn Samurai within one year, with at least 200 contacts, if not more. The challenge was not an easily conquered one. First, I worked for myself (co-workers: one). Also, I had moved to a new city from my hometown, which was also the home of my alma mater and original places of employment. 

Worse, while my freelance business was doing well, I had put all excess social energy these past few years into mommy-dearest activities, not social media breakfasts and hip happening happy hours. While everyone else had been drinking cosmopolitans and exchanging business cards, I’d been draining the dregs of leftover Capri Sun pouches at the Girl Scout picnic and trying to poach other women’s best babysitters.

The first step in the challenge was to begin to pay attention whenever I met someone new. I surprised myself with how many customer meetings I attended where at least one person was previously unknown to me. When I heard myself saying, “Hi, I’m Julie Kendrick, I don’t think we’ve met,” I would scribble the new person’s name in the corner of my notepad. Once a week or so, I’d invite all the new people I’d met to become part of my network. Most of them accepted – I figured they were trying to pad their contact lists, too.

This “meet one, invite one” philosophy only got me so far, however, and I decided to take a more aggressive approach. I began to troll the contact lists of the people who had just accepted my invitations, figuring that they might know someone I knew, too.

This method yielded results, but also some truly disturbing finds. As I spread my nets wider, the catches contained some specimens I couldn’t quite recognize as actual members of the working class. There were the e. e. cummings-ites, who displayed their names in lower case and discussed their accomplishments in free verse. There were the CAPITAL FIRSTERS, who shouted their entire resumes in upper case. I found typos everywhere, such as the woman who boasted of her work in “immerging” markets, or the event planner who listed her field of endeavor as “entertaimnent.”

The photographs, especially, got weirder and weirder, the farther I ventured away from my home base. These associates-of-associates had made some interesting choices when they clicked “upload” on their profile page, I’m just saying. I ran across several people wearing dark sunglasses. At least two had selected pictures of themselves with their boyfriends, and one sad sack displayed herself with her dog licking her face. There were the pictures taken from so far away that I wondered what the person was trying to hide. On the other hand, there were several photographs of such a close-up-and-personal nature that I felt qualified to offer a dermatological assessment. And more than one person seemed to have decided “Hey, that thoughtful-hand-on-chin-pose looked great in my high school graduation photo, so I might as well give it a shot here.”

Many of the profile photos were clearly taken on vacation, on the theory that the sunburn and off-the-shoulder cocktail dress would impress a prospective customer or employer, right?  (Also, your husband's shoulder that you cropped out and thought I wouldn't notice?  I see it.) I wondered if calling attention to the quality and quantity of free time one enjoyed was really the best business tactic. I remember a former boss (who, aptly, looked just like Mr. Spacely from The Jetsons) who told me, "The minute the candidate mentions 'balance' in a job interview, I cross 'em off my list."

Back in my slowly expanding universe of contacts, I soldiered on.  I found some colleagues from a few jobs ago with whom it was truly a pleasure to reconnect. I was able to introduce some friends who were starting projects that required each other’s unique talents. And, I’m happy to say that, one year later, I have 415 connections ... and no plans to include that picture from Disney World as my profile shot.

Voyez mes epinards

When the kitchen starts to sound more like a translation booth at the U.N. General Assembly than a humble domicile, then I know that finals season is in full swing. In addition to the melodious soundtrack provided by the oft-Skyping Italian exchange student, Mary Katherine has been slamming the books for a seventh-grade Spanish final, and Emma has been tossing in a Chinese phrase or two, just to keep things lively.

I discovered in high school that I have a limited facility for languages, especially for speaking them. It turns out the same tone deafness which renders me unable to detect if the cellos are out of tune is also a contributing factor in my hopelessness at accents and dialects. I remember trying to get through a recitation of Middle English from The Canterbury Tales in graduate school, and I swear I could hear Chaucer spinning in his grave, all the way from the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey to my claustrophobic lecture hall.

Mary Katherine, undeterred by a lack of contributed genetic vigor, is undeterred, and she spent a large chunk of Memorial Day weekend practicing vocabulary that would allow her to order someone to cut the grass (cutar el cesped) or take out the garbage (sacar la basura).

I refrained from wondering aloud what good any of this would ever do her, short of managing a household staff in Southern California. Questioning the usefulness of any school-based activity has caused me to become hoisted with my own petard, so I'm naturally skittish. After I made a comment along the lines of “what earthly use is this knowledge” to Emma, when she was showing me some impossible math problem, she pointed out that, a week earlier, I had been happy to dissect the finer points of the witches’ speeches in Macbeth, with no comments at all about how useful such information would be someday. (Well, of course not.  Everyone knows how handy Shakespeare is for daily living.  See that petard reference at the start of this paragraph, for example. Thanks, Hamlet.)

During this study season, I’ve found myself learning some Spanish in spite of myself, and I’ve also found quite a bit of high school French resurfacing from deep in my brain. I keep saying “deh” instead of “day,” for example, and I try to drop all the “s” sounds from the end of words. I haven’t begun acting haughty, or surrendering quickly, but it’s only a matter of time.

Even with my limited recollection, I still recall one line from The Little Prince, which we had to read in French, “vous n'êtes pas un home, vous êtes un champignon.” (You’re not a man, you’re a mushroom).  And, most memorably, I recall this gem from some "At the Market" lesson :  “Allons, Mesdames, voyez mes epinards,” which translates to, “Hey ladies, look at my spinach.”

I’ve yet to find occasion to use this sparkling bon mot, but perhaps if I start acting haughty enough, or running away from gunfire, it will come to me.

Cigarettes : Prison :: Tollhouse Cookies : My Life

My mother loved breakfast, every bit of it. I could tell that she felt highly virtuous when she prepared a breakfast for me that she thought was especially fabulous.  I remember her placing a plate of French Toast in front of me when I was little; you could practically see the thought bubble over her head – “I am a Great Mom.”

Of course, in the obstinate way of children everywhere, I hated breakfast, every bit of it. I’d never met a fried egg or a waffle that I liked, even remotely. As soon as I could break free of the tyranny of French Toast, I gravitated to microwaved baked potatoes, turkey sandwiches and reheated leftovers.  

I thought of this recently when I was home one afternoon, churning out sheet after sheet of Tollhouse cookies from the oven. The girls had friends over, and, the friends being teenaged boys, they were delighted beyond measure at the appearance of warm, home-baked cookies.  “This is great!” one of them burbled to me. “Are you a chef or something?” I noticed a raised eyebrow from one of the girls. In their minds, there is nothing remotely cheflike about me. They stopped eating my cookies a long time ago. Like me, they understand the cookies to be currency in mommyworld, a place crowded with carpoolers who take on late night shifts, friends who invite us to their cabins, librarians who help us search for missing books and countless other souls who could benefit from a bit of grease for their wheels.  

I use cookies the way prisoners use cigarettes, and I distribute them as often as possible. The only secret to my recipe is consistency over creativity. I always have a batch about to be cooked, recently baked or heading to the freezer. 

Since my kids stopped paying attention long ago, they always seem surprised when friends, like those boys the other day, show interest in the cookies as something other than a method of barter. 

 

I still remember a summer afternoon several years ago, when Mary Katherine and her best friend Olivia were preschoolers.  They were finishing lunch at the kitchen table, and Mary Katherine, never one to linger over a meal when something really fun could be happening instead, nibbled the last bit of her bagel and said, “Let’s go back downstairs to play.” (A beautiful summer day, for these two, was always the perfect chance to hole up in the basement for an epic session of Barbies.) “I’ve got some cookies in the oven,” I said, “and if you can wait, they’ll be ready in just a couple minutes.”

“No,” Mary Katherine replied firmly, unwilling to be delayed another moment. “We have to get going.”

“I’d like a cookie,” said Olivia, softly, and her statement was accompanied by a little wince, as if she expected trouble.

From Mary Katherine, a deep, aggrieved sigh. She leaned against the wall, tiny arms crossed and teeny foot tapping, while her poor friend showed the bad judgment of waiting for a freshly baked cookie to emerge from the oven.

Olivia, the pig, finally ate her one cookie, displaying the sort of guilt one sees on the faces of nurses puffing away on Virginia Slims outside hospital entrances. They headed off to Barbieland, and I got back to work with the dough.

I’ve never fooled myself, as my mother used to believe about the French Toast, that being the sort of person who makes cookies qualifies me for Good Mom status. Kids bring their own yardsticks to the game, and they’re the ones who do the measuring. 

I’m sure the beautiful, well-groomed mothers hear about the friends whose moms are fabulous cooks; the homey types are tortured with tales of the highly accomplished. No matter what the measurement, I understand that I’ve got a limited range. I’ll never be a fashion plate, a career diva or even a decent driver. All I can do is all I can do, and, most days, all I can do is bake Tollhouse cookies.

The Dead Beagle Under the Bed (Another Adventure in Parenting Teenagers)

I went to bed early on Friday night, my head full of springtime in the worst possible sense. I was sure that a long stretch of blissfully uninterrupted slumber would restore me to pre-pollen levels of bright-eyed vigor.

Four hours later, I was sitting in my brightly lit kitchen, delivering curfew-breaking punishments to two-thirds of my teen population-in-residence, and knowing that I would not be able to put in even a half a wink for the rest of the night.

For those of you who can’t wait for the little ones to grow up so you can finally sleep through the night, I can only say, good luck with that.

There wasn’t a great deal of yelling at 1:45 a.m. on Saturday morning, which I’m sure the curfew violators appreciated. They’d given a ride to someone, gotten lost … at this point, not even hearing them, I just held out my hand for the cell phone. This was serious. The cell phone is the Jedi Lightsaber of a sixteen-year-old. But Emma knew better than to plead that she’d be unable to defend herself against Imperial Stormtroopers, or even to text her boyfriend. She passed it over and I climbed back upstairs for a few hours of sleepless deep-breathing exercises, teeth grinding and insomnia.

I don’t have to punish very often these days, so it’s a muscle I need to flex and stretch a bit before I jump right into full-tilt chastisement. While I did consider adding some hair curlers and clutching a rolling pin, so I could look exactly like a cartoon version of Angry Woman at One A.M., I decided that my own face, in its current state, would be fright enough. I always remember my boyfriend Winston Churchill in times like these (don’t make fun of me; we’re very close), who warned that the gleeful vindictiveness of Versailles would cause trouble someday. And if you think that raising children is nothing like conducting a world war or negotiating a peace treaty, then you haven’t met my kids. I just shut up and get it over with; usually by the point of punishment, they’ve suffered enough just anticipating the inevitable.

As I thrashed about at 3 a.m., feeling truly awful, I had one of those “live every day as if it were your last” moments. Because I am maudlin and self-pitying (read:  Irish), I usually translate that feeling into, “I wish I could drop dead right now.” I blew my nose (for the three hundredth time since midnight) and pictured the blissful nirvana awaiting those who croaked from the deadly combination of teenagers and head colds.

Then I realized that, upon finding my dead body the next day, Emma’s first thought would not be, “Gosh, I’ll miss her, she made really good spring rolls,” but “where did she hide my confiscated cell phone?”

And this, of course, made me think of the Dead Beagle. I have a friend whose beloved elderly beagle finally died in its sleep one December night. The passing was bittersweet, but troublesome, since the December night in question was Christmas Eve, and they had to keep the poor dead beagle under their bed until the corpse could be brought into the veterinarian on Boxing Day. It put a bit of a pall on the Yuletide Festivities, as you can imagine.

I began to laugh to myself, picturing Emma barking, “Just stuff her under the bed for a while; no one will notice. First things first – we have to Find That Cell Phone!” And that’s how I made it through a miserable night – creating a farce that rivaled the Story of the Dead Beagle, imagining my teenager losing her mind because I shuffled off the mortal coil before I could tell her where I had hidden the goods.

I made it to dawn. I got up and made coffee. I had a day full of earnest conversations and family minutiae. I finally got a good night’s sleep last night and she gets her cell phone back today. But I know there will always be times when parenting proves so grating that I long for a Big Exit instead of the Daily Cameo Appearance I’ve been making in her life the past 5,800 and some-odd days.

That beagle had a good idea – slip away, but cause a little trouble as you head out, just to make sure they never forget you.

Thanks a Million, Literally: Report from a Foot Soldier in the Mommy Volunteer Corps

For regular people, May is a month of flowers and fun and celebration.  For women with school-aged children, it is the start of an unrelenting slog of baking, gifting and volunteering that ends only on the last day of school, which shimmers like a desert oasis in the distant reaches of June. Eventually, it will all be over, but first we have to survive May. We’re not even one-third of the way through this month, and already I’ve whipped up treats for Teacher Appreciation Day, stood in Thank You Staff! breakfast serving lines, organized gift donation collections for beloved coaches, and attended more than my share of “one last” concerts, recitals and banquets. Just thinking about the upcoming multi-layered events of high school graduation makes me want to pour gin on my morning Cheerios and call it day already.

The first thing I should say is that any effort put forth toward thanking the usually thankless souls who attempt to educate my children is well worth it.  At a Teacher Appreciation Day event this year, a public high school staffer told me, "I felt so bad all winter.  It seemed like all I heard on the news was what a bad person I was for being a public employee.  When my alarm went off this morning, I thought, 'Someone is going to appreciate me today!'" I wished I could offer this woman a limo and spa day, instead of bagels & cream cheese in the Media Center; she deserved it.

My children have attended a variety of institutions of lower and mid-level learning in what passes as their educational careers to date, and I’ve observed that, if you really want to figure out what a school is all about, forget the curriculum and the web site and do some research on the volunteers. In my day, I’ve lent a helping hand (or had it slapped) at schools whose culture ranged from Help Us We’re Desperate, to Go Away We Don’t Need Anything from the Likes of You, to Nasty Sorority Hazing Re-enactments, Our Specialty.

My favorite by far was the Help Us We’re Desperate school, the first one Emma attended. A city-based public school, it had free lunch participation of around 85%. Finding a mommy volunteer with a car, a command of English and some free time was rare, so the few of us who could manage to show up were treated like modern-day manifestations of Virgin of Guadalupe. (“A parent? Here to HELP?” the overworked teachers would practically sob in gratitude.) Whatever I did seemed to be just right – from hanging kindergarten artwork (crookedly) to serving cookies at conference night (without plastic gloves), all my work was applauded and thanked, inordinately.

So, I got cocky. The next school my kids attended was what I had always thought of as the little parochial school at the corner, but which, I soon learned, attendees regarded as a bastion of Exclusivity, Privilege and Tradition. In these halls of values-based Christian education, my Chinese-born daughter coped with Mary Margaret Kelly, the little darling who spent third grade calling Emma “Flat Face” and creating clever imitations of Asians by pulling up her own eyes at the corners.

Deep in the mommy trenches, I had my own set of bullies with which to contend. I volunteered in Mary Katherine’s kindergarten class for post-Christmas-program costume folding. Happily lost in my work (sloppy but enthusiastic, that’s my motto) I was startled to hear actual tskking behind my shoulder. “We don’t fold that way HERE,” a mommy sniffed, elbowing me aside to finish the job correctly. It didn’t take me more than a few more episodes like this to teach me a valuable lesson – don’t volunteer at the kids’ school, ever. 

These were clearly mommies of a different order than the happy, carefree sorts I’d encountered at the public school. It seemed as if these women, who had probably all been presidents of their own sororities, were now vying for some top spot in a new pecking order. As my brilliant friend Nancy Pratt says of these Mombies, “Honey, get off the float; the homecoming parade is over.” 

So, to spare myself from repeated bitch slapping, I concentrated my efforts elsewhere. I’d been a school volunteer no-show for so long that, when Emma entered high school, I was cautious. Big, inclusive, flaky and flexible would be the four words that best describe her high school, however, and I soon found that my volunteering efforts had returned to the status they’d had when Emma was in second grade – sorely needed and unconditionally appreciated.

Still, I always think it's a good idea to exercise caution when dealing with large groups of well-educated, perimenopausal women, who constitute the bulk of the high school’s volunteer corps. As a mommy foot soldier, I’ve learned to arrive on time, keep my eyes down and continue to ask, “What can I do next?”

I usually raise my hand for tasks that involve moving tables and lifting chairs, as those require the lowest level of skill and zero aesthetic input. Because no matter how nice the group, there’s always an art history major lurking somewhere, and then you’re doomed to endless rearranging. I was recently helping to set up a silent auction and found myself paired with a woman who actually stood back and made a little director’s square with her hands as she surveyed the merchandise. “We just need to fluff these up a bit,” she mused, and at the mention of “fluffing up,” my blood ran cold. I quickly skedaddled and found some tables to move. I have a theory on table-moving, too – I try to blend in with a couple dads right away. Their artistic standards are low and they usually carry the heavy ends of the tables without complaining.

The other trick I’ve learned as a mommy volunteer is to never, ever have an opinion, especially about anything having to do with color schemes. I’ve seen women practically come to blows over shades of teal. Leaving one’s ego at the door is the best way to survive a volunteer stint, since every mommy (but me) arrives with unwavering opinions on matters of decor and styling. At that same silent auction setup, I received specific instructions to place one doo-dad on top of each program at the table settings. (The mommy made me repeat the order back to make sure I understood.) I dutifully maneuvered around the room, completing my task. Fifteen minutes later (while moving a table with a burly dad), I noticed a new woman moving through the ballroom, carefully piling all the doodads up in the center of the tables. Good foot soldier that I am, I hardly noticed.

I can guarantee that I will never volunteer to chair one of these gigs, because I just don’t have that many opinions. Recently, while setting up at an ungodly early hour for a staff appreciation breakfast, I asked the chairwoman if I should put out a stack of napkins I’d found. “All but those green ones,” she told me firmly.  “I just can’t stand pastels!” But then, because this was the flaky public high school, she added, with a self-deprecatory chuckle, “I guess I’m just neurotic that way.” 

I hardly heard her, busy as I was picking out the pastel shades. As long as she didn’t ask me to fluff anything, I was happy to obey.

Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Cake

It’s not that I generally advocate the use of artificial substances to control behavior. But, in case you live with a teenager or two, I really feel I ought to share a recent discovery that transforms entire populations of adolescents into grateful, euphoric and docile little dears. Well, at least for as long as they're chewing.

My secret:  Cake Balls.

I came across the Cake Ball bible recently, and it changed my life. I haven’t lowered my blood pressure, lost weight or achieved a higher consciousness, but I have experienced the intense sense of personal power that comes from having a kitchen full of youngsters watching my every cake-ball-making move, sitting still like good little children and whimpering “are they done yet?” every now and then.

Cake balls, while powerful in their effects, are disgustingly easy to prepare.  Here are the directions: Bake a cake. Mash it up. Mix the mashed cake with frosting, the way you’ve seen countless one-year-olds do in their birthday home videos. Roll up the resulting mush into small balls. To gild the lily even further, dip the balls of mush in melted chocolate. Let them dry. Serve. Repeat.

You might suggest that kids who love cake balls are just drawn in by the shiny lure of the new. Who wants a wedge of cake lovingly cut by hand (so last century), when one can have an orb that hints, pleasingly, that it was popped out of an extruder at Mr. W. Wonka’s place. If I could shrink wrap them in cellophane, they’d be even more popular; the teens with whom I associate are anti-artisanal to the highest degree.

You'd be right to observe that cake balls are just the same old thing in a different shape. Agreed, but there’s power in continual shape shifting; why do you think Oprah has remained at the top for so long? As a reinforcement to their appeal, a friend recently said that the cake balls were cloyingly reminiscent of her childhood lunchbox favorite, HoHo’s. Eureka! I had a further clue about their secret taste appeal. Former FDA commissioner David Kessler has made a crusade against restaurants and processed food manufacturers who addictively layer fat, sugar and salt to get us hooked and bulk us up. Mixing the sugar of the cake with the fat of the frosting gives the balls a solid two out of three on the addict-o-meter.

Now all I have to do is figure out a way to inject some saline solution into these babies, and my plan for world domination (at least of everyone under 18) is complete.