For the Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias, (Epistolary Wednesday)

For You Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias,

I’m addressing you metaphorically, of course, as Austen’s characters are merely that. But, I find no better way to warn you, Girl, of the downside to obsessively fixating on potential matches and romance all around you in the seventh grade. You remember, don’t you, how Lydia’s obsession with “the officers” and her mother’s relentless matchmaking led to shame and embarrassment for her whole family, how she threw caution to the wind and put undeserved faith in Wickham, who was interested in sex and money and very little in Lydia? In Austen’s days, of course, Lydia was old enough to marry, but hitched and pregnant is not where I want you or any of your friends at sixteen. Need a contemporary warning? Lorelei Gilmore (albeit with the worst parents on earth). Pregnant at 16. Yes, it all turned out all right after she lived in a garden shed with her daughter and was estranged from her family for many years. It’s good now, but might I remind you of the years her romance cost her?

All this is to say, it concerns me that you take so much pleasure in matchmaking your friends at the junior high school dance, that you are “so happy for” the “couple” who has just placed tentative hands on one another’s shoulders and hips for the first time in their lives after only glancing at each other fearfully in the hallway for the first two months of school. You’re happy and squeally for them--as if they’ve just announced an engagement, a wedding, a baby. And this leaves me unsettled and wondering what on earth you think this means—two children swaying together for three minutes in a gymnasium. I hope you know this is not the end of their story. That they will (99.99999% likely) “break up” in the next two weeks, that their hearts will get broken over and over again in the context of this not-quite-real world of global studies tests, bus rides, field trips, hall passes, AP exams, choir concerts and track meets. They might do things they wished they hadn’t.

Sweetheart, some of these kids will take this "romance" in the serious way that you seem to be taking it--up to the next level. You should know: there will be pregnancies you will not see evidence of. There will be diseases you hear nothing about. Some of your friends, too, will end up used and abused by other children who haven't learned anything about real love. There will be appointments and counseling and parents tearing their hair out and crying because these poor parents are strapped with the job of helping these not-quite-or-even-close-to adults navigate adult-like decisions and adult-like hormones and adult-like bodies.

Please accept my kind but urgent rebuke. How about we celebrate romance later? Let’s pull out our dancing shoes when these children understand that romance is as temporary as the cold, solid ice pop you get handed at the Fourth of July parade. What seems so solid and dependable in romance can liquefy in the wrong climates. Let’s laugh and smile when these creatures learn how to own their choices and take responsibility for their lives. Let’s do the Macarena when they learn selflessness, because that's what helps love last; it's what gives romance a fighting chance at re-forming once it's become a puddly mess. Let’s do the Cha Cha Slide and the Chicken when they’ve learned how to suffer long for someone else, when they know how true love hopes and waits and defers and hangs in there and doesn’t give up. Okay, sweetheart? Okay? Okay??

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Kate Hudson, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Kate,

It used to be that we exercisers put on our grubbiest clothes, our holey-est shirts and the dirty sneakers we wouldn't ever wear if we were dressing for "regular" daily activities. But these days it's not enough that we are actually doing the work of exercising, that we are sweating and galloping on a treadmill or a cold wet sidewalk for forty minutes. No. Now we are supposed to look cute when we do it. But that's not news anymore. It's the reason Old Navy devotes a third of their women's clothing section to "activewear." And apparently the same reason why your new Fabletics line is showing up in my Facebook news feed twelve times a day. Like the next girl, I'm hooked by the promise of a good deal on running pants and sports bras, and Fabletics offers a first outfit for only $25. Better yet, join their VIP program and get an outfit at a reduced price, each and every month, for as low as $49. While I'm sure your husband, closet and budget can accommodate a new activewear outfit every month at $49 a pop, I'm not so sure about mine. Also, I'm finding on the message boards that "VIPs" get charged $49 whether they purchase an outfit or not. And most of them don't know this ahead of time. Should they want their money back because they neither need nor can afford a new outfit every month? Well, Fabletics will give them store credit to be used on a future purchase. (Ladies: beware.)

Kate Hudson, you're a genius or an opportunist depending on where one stands.  But your marketing bit is about "every woman": Every Woman Deserves to Look Cute in Affordable Activewear or some such spin. And this whole we'll-charge-you-for-nothing-and-not-give-your-money-back seems a bit disloyal of you, a bit antagonistic to the wellbeing of Every Woman, who as you ought to know, is for the most part working simply on making ends meet, acquiring winter coats for her children, paying dentist bills, or saving for retirement. You oughta know that Every Woman, by definition and common denominator, won't be purchasing that many pairs of yoga pants.

And I'm not sure how to even wrap my head around this statement, KH: "With Fabletics, we want to create a community...a movement, to help you live fit and achieve your passions in life." First off, joining the ranks of women duped by these monthly charges does not a community make. And second, working for clean drinking water in Africa is a movement. Civil rights for minorities is a movement. Feminism, the march on Wall Street, and breast cancer awareness are movements.

Wanna keep motivating women to exercise and purchase your products? Do it. But be straight up about it and treat us like we have some smarts and truly worthy causes to spend our money on. Because we do.

Dear Summering Girls, (Epistolary Wednesday, August 13)

Dear Summering Girls,

Recently, my blog feed exploded with posts from various mom-bloggers about "How To Stay Sane During the Summer When Your Kids Are Home" and "How to Set Up a Routine When You’re a Work-At-Home-Mom." I know these songs by heart, I've sung them so much.

If it was just me and you at home for the summer, it would be delightful. Pure magic. But it’s not. I’ve got this thing called "Work" and these things called "Expectations" (that you’ll know not to interrupt me at certain times; that you’ll really clean your room when you say you will) that mingle with us like houseguests that just won't leave, spoiling all our fun. And these last few weeks of summer, Work and Expectations have been at each other's throats. Some mornings it's just chaos and anarchy and I have to tell Work to hush up because Expectations are just being ignored like a cast-off friend.  I mean, how can you get worse at following your Morning Routine (i.e. brush teeth, dress, empty dishwasher, eat, do math facts, read for 20) now that you’ve had the whole summer to practice? And those pink shoes on the bathroom floor--the ones that have been sitting there for over a week, the ones I’ve asked you three times to pick up--are still sitting there.

The "after" picture.

Here's a typical conversation about Expectations:

Did you clean your room?

Yes.  

Let me check it.  [Gasp] Your laundry EXPLODED in here! What happened? How could you say you cleaned your room when it looks like this?

But I did! I did clean it!

But don’t you see the dirty underwear on the floor? What about the Kleenexes wadded up next to the garbage can? I want you to Clean This Room.

I have this naïve belief that come August 19, the first day of school, you will magically and suddenly become innately disciplined human beings once again; you will pull Expectations out from under that heap of clothing and wet towels on your bedroom floor, dust her off, and allow her to accompany you through your day: you will get up on time;you will eat more than a smattering of Cheerios for breakfast; you will put on fresh clothes and change your underwear and empty the dishwasher all without me mentioning these things to you. A mom can hope, can’t she?

Until then, I don’t even work in the home office most of the time because if I were to do that, you'd be leaving wrappers and tissues all over the living room and I wouldn't be able to catch you in the act. Best to have you deal with it immediately, before the candy wrappers and tissues become the next pink-shoes-on-the-bathroom floor and a month goes by before I see the carpet again. I wish I was that mom who didn’t lose brain cells at the sight of garbage on the floor, wish I could just sit right among the muck and play tickle fights and video games in the evenings when I'm done working, but you didn't win that lotto, girls. You are not those children and I am not that mom and someday, when you live in your own house and you’re all grown up, if you want to never flush the toilet and let it back up and let fruit flies reproduce over your left-out glass of orange juice, if you want to sit in a dark room all day and play video games, never seeing the sun, so be it. I will love you then as I do now. But I won’t live with you.

This is just to say that I really love you and I'm really looking forward to school next week, despite the fact that junior high and fourth grade are on the horizon, whole new worlds of Work and Expectations that I don't have to manage on your behalf. Instead, I will just be Mom with Milk and Cookies at the end of the day. I'll be a Good Listener and Your Biggest Fan and I will leave lunch clean up to the lunch ladies.

Dear Tiny Road Trippers (Epistolary Wednesday)

On Wednesdays, I write letters.

Dear Tiny Road Trippers,

Preschool closed down last week. It’s you and me and some vacation days and I want to take you away—from all the rat race of hide-and-go-seek in the evening backyards and Laundry Day and Morning Chores. Let’s go up to western Minnesota, you and me.  I think the drive is only 7 hours, but it’s really 8. With all our stopping and getting mixed up, the entire trip is 9. And for the first three hours, when one of you has to pee so desperately, twice, I think about turning around, think I don’t really have to do this. We could spend a happy few days at home, emptying the dishwasher and doing laundry and summer math facts and driving to the lake. But when we’re home, it’s so hard to break each of us from what pulls us most powerfully. My email account. Your smart phones. Your singular love for the 3-year-old neighbor boy.

Auntie Nay and Tiny piggy-backing

So here we are in a small town of 1,900, and when we drove in I felt myself relax. Felt we could just hunker down with the Boy's* family, now our adopted family, and walk the barely trafficked streets, run on the empty high school track, wave at neighbors, play at the playground, swim, beach. Of course, two of you can’t get through the day without a Minecraft marathon (curses on Minecraft!), but that’s okay; it gives me time with Tiny who, after a good nap, has turned so charming and sweet again and in love with her cousins and their dogs and her auntie.

Tiny, Cash, and Ruby

Life seems so simple here, if expensive. Auntie Nay says the groceries cost way more than what they cost us back home. There’s a Walmart and a Hy-Vee about an hour away, and that’s it. People here are farmers or teachers or doctors and some of them are out of work, and it’s calm and quiet except for when the St. John church bells ring at 5 p.m. for Saturday evening mass.

And now, I’m sitting on the bed at dusk next to Tiny as she whispers the words to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and fingers the movements in the warm, sticky air above her head until she pauses and leans over, still whispering, “Mom, my arm is tired. My arm is tired.”

“Okay. Well. Let it sleep.” I whisper back, and she receives this without comment and moves her fingers to tickling her belly. 

Dinner by sunlight.

In some ways, all our arms have gotten tired from holding up the routine. So then, we should let them sleep these few days before we face school registration and work and the Daily Grind.

Also, I just love you more and better when we pause all that other stuff so we can just be. Let’s always remember to do that. You’re getting so old and, I fear, drawing away each in your own little ways. This is normal, but sometimes we get so far apart that when I look at you this week I see both desire and uncertainty in one of your little faces; you’re wanting to get close like you were when you held my hand voluntarily everywhere we walked, but you don’t know how to get there without doing that.

After our visit, we stop in Minneapolis to see more cousins and that giant mall "of America." While driving through one of the many tiny country towns, I exclaim, “Look, here’s a town that’s ten seconds long! If you blink, you might miss it.” And you older ones unwrap the earbuds from around your ears and stare. “Whooa.”

Oldest, Middle, and cousins

There was a time when I had so much time that I walked hours daily to fill it. Around and across neighborhoods in all seasons of the year, I noticed things like rusty cars, children whining on the sidewalk, a dog sniffing near a ravine in the park. With all my modern-day efficiency strategies, all the smarts of smartphones, I’ve thought I’ve done myself a favor by filling up the time. I've been Getting More Stuff Done, so much that I’ve forgotten to be and notice as much as I've wanted to. And I haven’t helped you practice those things as much either.

“Mama,” Tiny says from her carseat as we exit the town. “I blinked but I didn’t miss it!”

I think, then, that there is still hope for us, despite all the blinking we do--for connecting, for paying attention, for being. And we can start now with this road and with this trip--with the shanty towns, the speckled cows, the chilled blue water of the community pool, and the street lined with toads that jump frantically out of our path. Let's do our best not to miss too much.

*The story about the Boy and how I adopted his family can be found here. 

A Post in Pictures Signifying Many Gifts and One Sorrow

It's Christmas time in Iowa City, and sweaters wear trees. I'm super glad about this--a reason to giggle when I walk downtown through wintertime slush. You should see all the sweaters on all the trees, each with their own 70s-inspired pattern. Some hippies were very industrious. This Christmas I'm trying to be less industrious than them. I'm thinking about rest in the face of sacred cows such as The Holiday Photo Card, featuring all Webers, clean, smiling and otherwise in tact. And it's hard enough to let my left hand know that my right hand is not addressing all those envelopes this year, harder to articulate it in writing here. And that there are people who mean the world to me that I am just not. buying. gifts. for.  Because it's just so much frenzy, too much all at once. I'm trying, instead to sit still sometimes, in scenes like this one:

Yes, that's a pile of laundry you see behind Tiny, and a bag of groceries that is yet unpacked. Tiny is delighted by all the chaos left haphazardly around the kitchen. And her delight is a gift, it really is because it encourages me to pause and appreciate small and unexpected things, like joy over dirty laundry and empty baskets. And--how's this for a segue?--this guy is a gift, too. That's John, my friend and graphic designer for my 

book. He's pretty talented, and spent hours and hours and hours fine tuning my cover while I spazzed about details of alignment and shadows and brightness. Yeah, he should win an award. And he's also a great photographer too, and has taken most of the good pics you'll see of me and the fam on the FB and the blog. If you're in the area, you should look 'im up. 

Now, this here is a family tree. Not mine, but the one belonging to my half-brother, Henry, about whom said book was actually written. When he died five years ago, I knew, in theory that there were multitudes of relatives on his father's side (other than his own half siblings and dad), but I never thought about them as real people with names and memories and sorrows like my own over losing the Boy. This month's most surprising gift was the flurry of Bertka relatives who began buzzing on FB about the book, contacting me to introduce themselves, and to claim me as one of their own. It's been bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter, to hear their memories, to see their faces and family resemblances, and to know their stories with flesh now on skeletal plotlines. So, Rita, Mike, Mary--and of course, Naomi--I thank you. (And as I write this quickly, I know I must be leaving out others--it's a big family, as you can see!)

But here's the sorrow this month. My book, my beloved darling, has been literally misaligned by the printer. Many of the copies are produced with lines all aslant (see the bottom line of text--it's much more noticeable in person). It's depressing and left me a bit numb after unpacking sixty copies at my home yesterday. The printer will replace/refund any defective copies purchased by any individual or vendor, but it's still a sadness to know that some are going out into the world all askew. The manufacturer is investigating the problem at their production sites, but these things take time, as you know. If you buy a copy and it comes to you like this, it probably will do me and the book some ultimate good if you ask for a replacement. In the meantime, you could read the free kindle version that comes with purchasing the paperback book on Amazon. 

And there it is. And now I must go to preschool to pick up Tiny, and then it's off to dance class--hers, not mine.