Two Roads

Read this article about two paths to marital happiness - either have no kids at all or have a whole bunch of them. Doing something in between apparently does not bode well for a couple's happiness. This is how the plight of folks such as myself is described :

Attempting to balance being an autonomous individual and a social animal produces a kind of incoherence that leads to misery. You're constantly confused and being pushed in different directions.  You can't even explain to people who you are.

I find that to be a harsh indictment. In the modern world where a village is often lacking to help with the raising of our children, bringing up four or more of them is no walk in the park. One has to assume that one or both parents have to go to work to put food on the table -in either case, the time and energy required to raise the children is seriously diminished. I am not sure how a perpetually over-worked, at-capacity couple can have a great marriage - where would they find the time to nurture their relationship ?

The distinction between an autonomous individual and a social individual does not make sense either. To be a social animal (a parent) an adult has to be an autonomous individual first - they have to be functional and competent independently before they can take responsibility for any number of offspring. I am not sure that it is actually possible to be one or the other. As for the incoherence leading to misery - it could be argued that a social animal without a well developed autonomous individuality could be even more so and fall apart under the demands of  parenting four or more children

A Little Knowledge

The other day DB and I were talking about people of a certain age coming to feel inexplicable emptiness in their lives. When everything is functioning on autopilot and there are no big problems (money, health, substance abuse etc) to worry about, instead of feeling at peace they feel lost and miserable. Often a true spiritual guru may be able to answer what ails them and lead them out of it but it is certainly not easy to find one. Is the guru not supposed to seek out the disciple when they are ready ?

The stories of charlatans and false prophets are widely known as are the accounts of the damage they wreck upon the lives of their gullible followers. The conversation got me thinking about another kind of misguidance that parents and other adults may provide a child. In many Hindu families of my acquaintance I have seen adults take a parable or quote from a religious text, translated, diluted and distorted in the final rendition to make a point to a child. 

While they have the best intent, they lack the qualifications for the job they are setting to undertake. So their lesson may be entirely incorrect and do more harm than good. The child might in fact have been better served without the lesson in morality and ethics. The body of knowledge is too vast for an average person to assimilate on their own and good teachers are hard to come by. The oral tradition has been on the decline for a few generations now so the learning parents pass on to their children is a pastiche culled from a variety of sources - not all equally reliable. 

When I was growing up, I often heard adults talk about the misogynistic views expressed in Manu-samhita and how it stymied the growth of the Indian woman for hundreds of years. Manu was held directly responsible for all the social ills of the country. Random quotes would be tossed up and torn apart for the purposes of these discussions. Though I was too young to participate, I itched to ask how many had read the original Sanskrit version of the text, how many had read any expert commentaries to it and finally what was the overall context of the quote that was under fire. 

Similarly, someone would quote a short passage from the Bhagavad Gita or one of the Upanishads and expound on it as if the literal translation was all that there was to it. My childhood is rife with examples of adults with dangerously little knowledge of Hindu philosophy attempting to mold my world view and teach me the art of living. Lately, I find myself trying to rid my system of all that meaningless clutter - become knowledge free so I have a shot of learning something right.

Short and Sweet

When J is in trouble, she launches into a defense that is as improbable as it is convoluted. She is deliberately slow and aims to exhaust. By the time she is done, I might have even forgotten what I was mad at her for and snap at her for rambling endlessly. But there are times when she can be succinct. 

When she reads a new book, I encourage her to talk about it, better still write up a short review. Needless to say, she views these things as  chores she'd rather not do. It is so much easier to get away with "It was really cool !" - a phrase that I hate with passion. This morning, I asked her about The Man Who Counted (a book she has just read) and she had this to say "It is  Birbal meets The Number Devil "

Maybe I can challenge her to summarize books in six non-adjective words. Knowing J, I would be shocked if she does not find a way to wriggle out of that assignment as well.

Mildly Complicit

Recently J told me about a profitable little business enterprise that a kid in her class has been running. He makes paper guns and sells them at a quarter a pop. The paper bullets are sold for ten cents a piece. By her accounting, he has sold at least ten guns.A couple of issues were bothering her - is this kind of activity allowed in school and is it fair for the boy to sell these things for real money.

She does not want to be the tattle tale and report him to the teacher because both the gun and bullet are harmless. Apparently, all the kids know about it but no has taken it upon themselves to inform the teacher. I am guessing like J, they must have mentioned this to their parents, and like me, those parents have not recommended that their child talk to the teacher about this. I find this whole situation intriguing at many different levels. The kids are in the least considering this a little outside the ordinary and  likely talking about this at home. They are not convinced that it is bad enough that the boy needs to reported - there is symmetry in their thought process. If that is true about the adults as well,they maybe chalking this up to a kid being silly and creative, having a little harmless fun -  expecting it will go away once the novelty has faded.

J has not talked about this in the last couple of weeks so it is quite possible that all potential buyers have already made their purchases and better yet reverse engineered it to make their own.This incident had me wondering if we as parents are sometimes complicit in bad outcomes in the lives of our children.As a group we failed to call this child's attention to something that may not be entirely cute, creative or silly. Maybe we have provided tacit encouragement as a group for him to up the ante some more.

Comfort Zone

J can be the life of the party at home but will turn into a little mouse in school. This has been her way for the last couple of years or maybe we have noticed it more since that time - DB and I would love to see some of that fun, vibrant and somewhat theatrical personality she displays at home to make its way to the classroom as well. But that has yet to happen. We recently signed her up for drama class and she is having the best time of her life there. 

Even with that, the mouse at school is yet to transform into something bigger and bolder. I spoke with her guidance counselor this morning and she said something that helped recalibrate my expectations about J. 

Ms K said that no matter how hard you push and how hard you try as a parent, there is little you can do to change  what is innately the child's personality. J may never be able to be her most natural self outside the comfort zone of home. She will benefit from us encouraging her to be more assertive, being front and center of things instead of hiding somewhere no one can see her and most importantly advocating for herself. Yes, the drama lessons will help too. She will do a little of everything that we would like for her to do but it may never be to the extent that we believe she is capable of based on what we see of her at home. This is something we as parents will learn to accept and move on. 

Hearing Ms K helped me in several ways - for one thing, I will not be so quick to be disappointed with J when she struggles disproportionately (in my mind) to speak up, assert and advocate herself. More importantly, I will ask her to take on smaller challenges to build up her strength - I will continue to push as I have always done but more in the form of gentle  nudges than a big shove in the direction I want her to go. I hope in time, J will have acquired the confidence to be bring that much bigger personality she has to bear upon the mouse simply because being her natural self would be more fun and relaxing.

Delhi Belly

I have not watched a Bollywood flick for over a year now and decided it was time to get caught up. I chose Delhi Belly and was very glad I did. It is a funny, risque and smart little movie  - not your garden variety Bollywood caper. Each character does their part really well in making this movie come together rather nicely. The dude with the Delhi Belly is not the protagonist but his condition directly contributes to many twists and turns in the plot. The fact that I laughed as many times as I did watching this movie, made me realize that the desi in me is alive and well ; not having been back to India in over eight years has not taken that away from me. DB would have enjoyed it too - but his desi-ness is much too worn out for him to get what I did out of it.

What is specially neat about the movie is how well it captures the essence of the Indian experience - we are a people and country that can span centuries and millinea within a day of our lives. There is this dilapidated house with toilet fixtures from the early part of the last century shared by three guys with unremunerative, non-mainstream jobs, the offices are swank and very twenty first century, the electronics on the more well-heeled characters are state of the art , the wardrobes are deeply influenced by the west but not entirely subordinate to it. To that extent we have the ironic tee-shirts with distinctly desi flavor and the zari trimmed vest on a scooped top. There is the kathak guru upstairs from the three guys instructing young girls on a dance form thousands of years old in a setting not unlike what it was back then - very little if anything has changed about their world. The landlord who seeks comfort in the arms of a prostitute visits them in an establishment that looks as old as the trade itself.

The female characters in the movie range between conservative to liberated and everything in between. They are not the one-dimensional romantic interests for the male roles - among other things it was good to see female sexuality being acknowledged without subterfuge.There is a place in India for all of this to co-exist, the multitude of characters and locales that shape our communities grow with the wild profusion of a tropical rain forest. It may not be pretty or well-ordered but it is certainly not sterile and lifeless. All of these contradictions come together to create the Indian and desi experience. I have missed the time travel that everyday life back home can be. Delhi Belly was the perfect Indian sampling platter for someone who has not been home in a while.

Musical Wilderness

I am just about ten years late to the party but better late than never. For all that time I lived in musical wilderness without an idea of where to find new sounds that may appeal to me. In a time when nostalgia should have been indulged in sparingly if at all, I wallowed in it. I drew comfort from familiar music in times of trouble and while the music recreated it's magic, it brought in its wake memories that I was anxious not to return to. From being one of the biggest joys and escapes of my life music became an unfamiliar, uncomfortable relationship. 

I used to try and listen to the iPod shuffle lists of blogosphere luminaries. Sadly they did nothing for me - apparently our tastes were too far apart. J is itching to discover music just like me at her age - she is constantly looking for recommendations so she can find that magic range of sounds that resonate deepest with her. The music I have grown up with and love is too far away from her culturally, generationally or both - she may grow into it in time but right now she needs to hear something with a modern sound and vibe. Then this past weekend, I discovered Fluxblog (a music blog that has been around since 2002) and I am trying to catch up on missed time. Whatever his criteria and musical sensibility, I am certainly feeling in synch with a lot of Matthew Perpetua's recommendations and that is such a blessed relief -finally someone who can lead me out musical wilderness. I may now be able to help her broaden her horizons as well.

Wrong Lane

I interviewed for a full time position after many years a month ago. This is one of the biggest companies in town and pays better than most other outfits. Post marriage and with J getting ready for middle school next year, I thought it would be best for me to slow down and settle into a regular job, have vacation time and generally better work-life balance. The interview process was like a decathlon - I jumped and cleared all the required hoops and had no less than four different hiring managers clamoring to bring me on board.

Life was good until it was not. A couple of weeks after all these "great conversations" were had, the recruiter came back with an offer that was for a position one level below that what I had interviewed for and had these "terrific" discussions with the different hiring managers.Right after dissing me with respect to the position she threw me a bone - she promised to make up the pay difference by giving me the highest salary they could at the level. In a full time role, position often counts more than salary - I may have settled for the lower pay if the position (specifically, title) was what I needed it to be. 

I found it intriguing how this all worked. I was being low-balled for position and not money (we may have been able to agree on that) because it must have become apparent during the course of the many discussions that the title and where I was in the hierarchy was more important to me than compensation. The whole experience left a bad taste in the mouth - I realized that I had failed some shibboleth that identified me as the outsider I am when they were looking for an insider who could be like one of them, fit in the culture and generally not upset the established order of things.

It has been a while since I have been in the corporate environment as a full time employee - I have forgotten how to swim in the shark tank that it can be.DB tells me that I am being needlessly proud and emotional in making the decision not to accept the job offer - the money I am being offered is still very good. He is probably right but I feel like I would be better off leaving with my dignity intact than accepting less than I deserve. In my single parent years, I never exercised my right to choice about employment - I took the first thing that came along because being employed was the single most important objective - I sacrificed a lot in the process. This time I am exercising my right to choose not to be in the wrong lane and wait until I find what is right for me. As the holiday nears and the job market dries up for the year, my resolve may start to waver - I would feel like I am imposing upon DB if I don't do my part for the family.

Lack of Resolution

As soon as I spotted T at the table by the window, I could tell she was bursting with news. It had taken us a week and a couple of reschedules to meet for lunch - it certainly helped for my calendar to be wide open everyday or this would have taken months. I was not wrong about the "news". Even before I had taken my coat off she announced "Do you remember M ?" I had a bad feeling about this one right away. 

M was someone she had introduced me to several years ago in her overzealous effort to pair me up. The guy was nice enough but clearly not right for me. We met a couple of times and went our separate ways. That was the last time T played match-maker and I was in a sense grateful to M for this."Yes, I do" I replied. "Guess who he got married to last month ?" I had no idea. It turns out that his wife is T's boss at work. 

I realized that piece of information in itself was not the "news" she was bursting to share. "Well, he has a profile up on Match pictures and all and another girl I know has been talking to him for months ! What a creep ! I realized it was M when she told me about this cool guy she met online but hasn't met for real yet. He travels a lot on the job - what a load of bullcrap !" T continued without pause before I could ask what was newsworthy about her boss marrying M. 

"So are you planning on ratting him out ?" I asked. "That is exactly the problem. Clearly, I can't tell my boss. I could tell this girl but she is a bit of a lose cannon - I have no idea what she'll do when she find out who his wife is. What do you think ?" T replied.

I was wondering if M's wife already knew what he was up to and was deciding to turn a blind eye to save face and maintain what she can of her dignity in this sordid situation. He was not even taking the trouble to hide his pictures on his profile and was talking to a girl in the same town - he was cheating on his wife with complete impunity. He could not even be bothered to follow the 50 mile rule to spare her embarrassment.

T's boss is a desi woman in her mid forties. She had gone to medical school in India and  earned a bunch of advance degrees in this country. She headed up a research lab in town. According to T, she was very attractive and looked years younger she really was. M is just a run of the mill IT drone with a fairly limited world view and an over-sized ego. It is sad enough that the woman with so much going for herself would have to settle for one such as M but to add insult to injury, one such as M would take her for granted to the point he would humiliate her so blatantly. That is all I could think about.

I had no idea what T should do under the circumstances - maybe turn a blind eye as well and let the three of them deal with it. So here I was, looking forward to lunch with an old friend, wanting to share some of the things on my mind - the feeling of lightness and purposelessness during my time off, not having the wherewithal to enjoy some downtime without going crazy and I am called upon to resolve a moral dilemma.

Finder

I think I want one of these Finders to help me find my all too often misplaced stuff. I would actually go beyond the mundane business of key and phone (and everything in my bag that I cannot find) and use it to locate my spices in the kitchen stuffed two or three layers deep or just somewhere I would not readily know to look. Then there is all the paperwork put away ever so carefully never to be found again. My list of missing, misplaced or forgotten stuff is a very long one - mostly I am dealing in the territory of "unknown unknowns" and that can be rather scary sometimes.

DB's big complaint about my cooking is that there is way too much improvisation going on all the time and no consistency. If he likes how I cooked something for dinner one night the odds of that dish being reproduced ever again are close to none - he jokes that he eats every nice meal I cook like it were his last meal. While that is in part because I cannot curb my need to improvise in the kitchen, but a lot of the "changes" happen as a result of not being able to find the right spice at the right time. Sometimes the outcomes of these bizarre last minute switches surprise pleasantly and DB and J will urge me to write down the recipe so they can have it again.Needless to say, recipe writing is not my forte.The less said about the times things go south, the better.

Now, if I could assemble everything I needed before I started cooking (as DB always encourages me to), we may not run into these issues at all but that mode of operation would be inconsistent with a compulsive improviser. More often than not, I have no idea what I am about to cook until the very last minute so it is impossible to have a fully flushed out plan. A Finder may help me improvise within safe guardrails and not have me switch from a Far Eastern recipe to a Central American one because I was not able to locate what I needed on time - DB and J may be spared that sinking feeling when they see a familiar dish look just a tad different.

Doris The Cauliflower

The blurb on Doris the Cauliflower in this article gave me pause. Were I to run into her in the local supermarket would I choose her over Anon ? Being a frugal shopper the only measure that would steer me Doris-wards would be price. Now, if they were priced exactly the same, I do think I would allow myself to succumb to the cute factor choose a named cauliflower. 

If the trend caught on and every fruit and vegetable started to have a name, it would become unappealing and annoying even - at that point I would not care anymore. I wonder how kids may react to this and if they may be more inclined to try something they may not have otherwise cared for. As a test, I asked J and she said she'd be more interested in Doris than a plain old cauliflower (a vegetable she does not like too much) - it was more fun. She added that the blurb about Doris gave you an idea of how to cook the vegetable without being a recipe - that she thought was interesting idea too. 

Should this be appealing to kids in general, there could be some co-branding opportunities. Baby carrots being Thomas the Train or Dora the Explorer could get our little ones to choose them over chicken nuggets and Cheetos for instance. Parents would likely pay a little extra for the named vegetable in that case.

Living Within Means

In her article Planet Singlehood, Amiee Ginsburg writes "Now I realise there was a price to be paid for being a couple that I could not pay, even though I had had my heart set on it. Now I’m living within my means." A long time inhabitant of Planet Singlehood, I can completely relate to her sentiments. It does take a lot of mental space and energy to come into and sustain a relationship. I had foolishly assumed the same amount of investment would not be necessary in marriage and I am learning I was wrong. While I was unable to extend myself as far as was required to just be in a relationship, I feel more ready, willing and able to do so in marriage simply because my spouse has gone the distance by making a lifetime commitment to me and J - as such, he deserves it. Yet, the effort that goes into the process does make me feel like I am "living beyond my (emotional) means".

Of her single state and its impact on her kids, Ginsburg says "I was not able to show them how to cross adulthood in a healthy relationship, but maybe they’ve learnt something about autonomy and strength, and true love." How absolutely true ! I don't know that I am the best role model for J as far as how to be in a healthy relationship. I have a lot of unresolved issues that are making their presence felt in my marriage with DB. In the end, she will take away from observing me and us, what she will. If it is within my power, I will encourage her to examine our life and decide what parts of it to emulate in her own and what to reject. Enabling her to do that will the best I can do in lieu of being the relationship role model, I have not yet been able to be.

Uncoiled Spring

I am enjoying a little time off these days after many vacation-less years. One of the pitfalls of having a clockwork routine for a very long time is that you forget how to unwind, relax and do nothing. It took me several days to learn not to look at the clock and let time ebb as is must without being mindful of its passage. I learned to watched the squirrels and birds in the backyard, consider the beauty of the tree that has a creeper covering its trunk and moss encrusting its bare branches. 

Once spring returns, I will not be able to see this unadorned beauty any more. When the day warms enough, I go out for a four mile walk. My route takes me past a high school and sometimes I see a bunch of kids in the schoolyard - if I happen to be there during their recess. Mostly, everyone is inside in the classrooms. The streets are empty, the traffic is light and I enjoy my solitude and music. My idyll was broken rudely one rainy morning, when I woke up feeling that my life was without purpose.

J is a fairly responsible young lady and requires very little supervision. DB is not a needy husband - he is able to give me as much space as I need and does not interfere with any of my plans. His mantra for this relationship is that I bring happiness to him only when I am happy on my own and he is willing to support any and all of my pursuits of happiness. The definition of "my life" outside my two roles in the family of wife and mother seems to be lacking if not entirely absent. 

So while I have a partner who is urging me to expand my horizons and seek out that which will nourish my soul, I don't know that I know what that may be. I use my work to give me a sense of self - with that missing for now, I was grasping for something else that had comparable weight. It was the "unbearable lightness of being" that I was experiencing. The incessant rain was not helping my spirits either. In lieu of waiting for the sun to pick me up, I reached out to my friend T to see if she wanted to do lunch. 

As I was going to find out, tapping into a source of energy outside myself can have some unexpected consequences.

Transformation

I saw the Cassandra Bankson video a few days ago and was amazed by her artistic talent. She was able to transform her canvas in the most extraordinary way - it was like watching artist create a master-price. Her message is straight from the heart - it takes a lot of courage and empathy for such a young person to be able to show a face so badly scarred for the world to see. Most women wear makeup - from a little to a lot of it. It is not unlike children using crayons to express themselves. What we make of our "crayons" can in the end be very different. Cassandra is able to use them as a powerful tool - it frees her from social awkwardness and self-consciousness that an acne ridden face can mean.

She uses makeup to liberate herself and that is a powerful transformation to watch. She is a beautiful person even without the makeup but with her skills she is able to achieve the level of airbrushed perfection that millions of others aspire to. I was left wondering about reality and illusion as I watched the video - which is the real Cassandra. As her face nears perfection, you can almost feel the internal transformation happen - she emerges like a glorious butterfly from its chrysalis. Makeup when done as perfectly as Cassandra's is like a mask infused with life. It enables the person wearing it take on a completely different personality. In her case, a career path that would have otherwise been impossible. It is no longer about simple vanity, it is an enabling force - I don't think I had ever thought of makeup in those terms until I saw this video.

A woman freshening up to go to work would be the equivalent of a child's doodle to Cassandra's Rembrandt. Professional makeup artists do what Cassandra is doing every day; the fact that she uses her own face ( the blemished canvas) to illustrate her art is what makes this a such powerful and personal statement about what is in the realm of possible for anyone to achieve.

Evergreen Toys

This list of the five best toys ever is the best list of toys I have ever seen. J used to love all of them except the last one - dirt. She is yet to outgrow String and Box. Very reassuring to have an expert (the author) share a lay person's (myself) perspective on toys for children. 

J's dance teacher has a four year old boy who I play with when we are there for her class- it keeps him occupied and out of the way of the dancers.The kid has a designated toy room with at least five hundred toys and yet he inevitably wants to play his favorite game that involves none of them. It takes a piece of cardboard, two dice and two plastic sticks. He can spend a good hour creating  variations of games using just those things. I've asked him to show me how some of his toys in the toy room room work. He grudgingly agrees and wants us to go back to playing his game of board, dice and sticks.

It is as if he wants to escape the excess of toys by going back to basics - he could not get more minimal than that.The most J had was four of five toys and her favorite was the empty spool of thread strung with a bright red cord. She could spend a whole day with that thing and some utensils from from the kitchen to bang together and make noise with. She talked to herself, laughed at something only she knew was funny - she was as happy as could be in control of her world and doing as she pleased with it. Her attention span for a new toy was limited to under five minutes and once she had figured what it was about she never came back to it. I bet the dance teacher's son feels the same way about his toys - he has them all figured out and they mean nothing special to him anymore.

That is precisely the reason the list of five in this article are such a big hit with kids - there is an infinite number of ways to interpret them and introduce them to their imagine play. The objects are not meant to be figured out and forgotten, instead they are there to be molded by the child's imagination to become what they are innately not. Reading this article right after my Disney trip was most refreshing.

All Disneyed Out

Since we got married, DB has been trying to impress upon me the importance of taking J to Disney before she is too old to have never been there before. She turned ten recently and DB decided to go ahead and book us a trip being that I was not warming up to his idea briskly enough and "times are a wasting" as he likes to say. J has never been a Disney animation fan and she is not super adventurous either so I was not sure how well a six day theme park vacation would work out for her. She had the best time of her life and I am so glad DB pushed us to do this for her. But this post is not strictly about the Disney experience.

South of North Carolina, I started to notice something strange about public restrooms. They all had dispensers for an assortment of condoms and "surprise" sex toys and novelties. I don't recall seeing anything like this anywhere else I have traveled in this country. J usually likes to ask DB for a pack of gum at convenience stores and I squirmed with discomfort to see gum placed right next colorful packets of condoms. The adult themed restrooms set the stage for what I would encounter in Orlando but I did not know that then. DB and I had picked out a hotel that seemed reasonably priced and very close to the parks. We congratulated ourselves on finding a good deal on what was very short notice. As responsible parents we even verified that it was a safe and kid-friendly neighborhood.

That evening, when we reached Orlando, some kind of classic car parade was in progress and in the lane next to us were these cars painted in garish colors and set up on oversize wheels. From within them urban music with the most profane lyrics blared out for all to hear. The windows were rolled down and you could also see the music videos playing inside - even if we pretended J could not understand the words, the visuals left very little to the imagination. Police on horseback were trying to get the crowd under control and I was asking myself if this was not the dumbest decision DB and I had made since we became a team.

After what seemed like a lifetime of inching through the traffic we finally made it to the hotel. While DB stepped in to pick up our room keys, J and I watched two troopers arrest and handcuff a young man. J observed that it happened just like they show in the movies - she seemed very impressed by that. By this time, I was willing to lose our reservation and go any place else. DB assured me that the police presence assured us of safety - if I felt the same way the next morning, we would find another place. We decided to go out and grab some pizza - so desperate was our need to stretch and get some fresh air that we decided to brave the crowds outside. The sidewalks were a mess with horse poop everywhere - the cars had thankfully passed and there was one less thing to worry about. On the way back from dinner, we stopped at a store to pick up a gallon of drinking water. While paying for it I could not help notice the irony in pregnancy test kits right next to Disney key chains and yes, more condoms. If this was kid-friendly I was not sure what was not. I have never been so relieved to be back in a hotel room which was just about okay - we were too tired to care and glad to get some shut-eye.

We started with Magic Kingdom the next day and the week was a blur of sensory overload - the rides, the shows and and the food. J tasted Sushi, Ethiopian and Brazilian food for the first time. The weather was beautiful except for a sudden shower one evening while we were at Epcot. DB got sick from riding the Space Mission (Orange Team) and had to be taken to first aid to recuperate for a couple of hours. J said that she felt like she had lost her brain - I shocked us all by having a great time and feeling just fine. Each day, J surprised us by enjoying rides I never guessed she would. By day four she was showing signs of saturation but still soldiered along. I had to admit that Disney helped me decompress - completely. You cannot not be in the moment, enjoying the here and now while you are in its thrall.

I am glad we went - DB and I relaxed like we have not in a long time, J had fun like only a child of ten can have fun so it was perfect for her. I know I will never return to Disney again but it would be a miss to live in America and never have been to Disney.

Ego and Cry for Help

In marriage, each partner must balance their ego with their unheard cries for help. I learned this in my first marriage and am re-learning long forgotten lessons another time now. In the early days of my marriage with DB would ask for me to do a few specific things to ease him into the marriage - small changes, small gestures of understanding and kindness for me but deeply significant in their impact to him. I let my ego get in the way of doing what I was being asked to. I heard him making demands instead of hearing his cries for help. I would be more than willing to help but I refused to meet any demands. Such is the nature of perception. 

Each of us has a different way of reaching out for help from the one we love. For over a year DB appealed and I refused to comply because he was not talking the language I wanted him to talk in. Now he has given up and it is my turn to cry for help. His ego may be a little smaller than mine but it still makes its presence felt. I am not speaking the language that will appeal to his heart. As a result, he is holding back the help I am seeking just as I have for the longest time. 

Ironically, now that he never mentions it again, I find myself doing all those little things he had so badly wanted me to do for such a long time. He notices, but it means a lot less now than it would have once. I am only now beginning to realize how much work it takes to hear and be heard effectively in a marriage. I wonder if things are not that much harder for both of us because we've been single and on our own for so long that any request to change from our partner feels like an imposition and our immediate reaction is to bristle. Being relationship-free for as long as we have both been make our communication skills with each other more than a little rusty. When you throw a little bit of ego in the mix - it makes for a potent combination.

Stranded at Search

For the last couple of days, I've been wondering about the disappeared Advanced Search link on the Google homepage. At first I thought it was some kind of browser issue, so I refreshed it a few times, cleaned cache, cookies, history and all for good measure - nothing. So I've been looking and looking with my frustration mounting by the click and scroll. 

Now two days later I find out that the link has been moved to the bottom of the page and it takes an extra click to get there. For a while now, I've had this feeling that Google is slowly losing its marbles - the ubiquitous + icon on websites absolutely creeps me out. There is nothing to "Like" about it as far as I am concerned. I hasten to check if Google is enforcing my endorsement of the website without my consent. Given the thing they pulled off with their launch of Buzz, I would certainly not put it past them. 

Then there is this whole Hangout business that is as muddled in concept as it is in delivery. There is Google Offers trying to do be Groupon and I am sure there are many such bizarre experiments cooking in their labs that will sneak up on us when we least expect it. I could gripe a very long time about Google becoming disoriented and chaotic like Yahoo ; how this could be the beginning of the end but the advanced search link being moved to the bottom of page two is unconscionable unless it is some kind of perverse social experiment. 

At any rate, I had switched over to Bing by this afternoon and was relieved to find the advanced search option clearly available where one might expect it. I think I will stay with Bing for a bit - the search results are much better than they were when I first checked it out. I don't much care for Google showing me my current location on the left when I am doing a search - I don't see why that is relevant, none of the other options make much sense either. There is sense of sophomoric and dysfunctional about all of the choices. Someone decided to throw in a bit of social and local into the mix - just because everyone else that's cool doing that stuff. Does not look like anyone is really driving this bus anymore - it has a life of its own. If that link does not return where it belongs, I don't think I am coming back to Google for search any time soon.

Hall of Mirrors

If life expectancy is hereditary, mine could go either way. One side of my family lives into their 90s, the other has folks dropping off like flies in their 60s and 70s. Lately, I find myself thinking about the half-life mark - specially since DB and I got married. Somehow, having the path to the future defined, has brought in its wake, the need to stop, take stock and yes - self-flagellate. An urge to reconnect with long lost friends apparently comes with this particular territory. I wonder where S (my best friend) with is, how she is doing, if we could talk all night like we did in our college days, if we would have even one thing in common anymore - and I chide myself for letting my communication with S ebb away.

Not knowing the answers to those questions bothered me enough to begin a search. So easy in the time of Google and Facebook and yet so perilous. Now S is nothing if not notoriously private and so are many of our common friends. Finding S, I discover is no walk in the park. I don't know if she is now married and if she uses her husband's last name. My quest for S, however leads me into uncomfortable territory - I have to start looking up hubs in our social network hoping they will somehow lead me to her.

These are folks with two hundred plus friends (which sadly do not include S). Some faces have not changed that much, others have transformed beyond recognition. And that is the easy part - the devil is in the details; careers, spouses, kids, holidays and the endless stream of pictures with everyone in them smiling a hundred percent of the time. My quiet world feels the full force of the information overload. I begin to wonder how I have fared relative to my peers - on all counts. I fear I may have "gained the world and lost my soul" -I fear that I may not be high enough on the happiness quotient relative to my reference group - nothing else matters nearly as much.

I think back to the days of our early youth, we were very different then too. This was the "fun" crowd - they were about taking it easy and having a great time - work came only as an afterthought. Some of them were very bright and enterprising so it comes as no surprise that they are doing very well professionally. This was the crowd you hung out with when you wanted to chill. Things have not changed that much - in time, the moments have added up and online I get to see their life distilled - with its best, most shining moments on parade for the world to see. It is like being in a hall of mirrors - things are not exactly what they appear to be and yet nothing is fundamentally untrue.

As I swirled through the maze, it became evident that S would remain hidden by her invisibility cloak as would some of my other friends. If at some point in their lives, they felt the strange pressure that reaching half-life mark exerts, they may do what I tried - maybe we will connect then.

Interview with Kavita Parmar

Several months ago, I received an email from The IOU Project inviting me to check out their website and get to know them and their concept. I was more than impressed with what I saw and absolutely fell in love with this short video (the 3 Minute Video link at the bottom left of their homepage will take you there too) that tells the story of IOU. 

IOU brings tradition and technology together in many unique ways - the concept of a Trunk Show is one of them. It is described thusly :

Back in the day, when a fashion designer wanted to showcase a collection, he or she would take to the road with a heavy suitcase or trunk stuffed with goods and show off them off to friends. We let you do the same - but on the web. No heavy lifting required.

Instead of running a garden variety plug for them on this blog, I offered to interview Kavita Parmar, the Founder and Creative Director of IOU, and she most graciously accepted. You can tell she is passionate about her idea and has the energy it takes to bring dreams to fruition. I wish Kavita the very best and hope to chat with her again sometime in the future.

HC : How would you introduce the IOU Project to someone who has never heard about it ?

KP : I have 2 answers for that :

Mission - The IOU Project is born from the need to both empower the artisan and celebrate uniqueness using the full scope of modern technology. The idea is that the fashion business, when carried out with true transparency and authenticity, can elicit extraordinary reactions and foster a shared sense of responsibility from its customers, partners and suppliers – towards each other and the environment.

Business - The IOU Project is a social commerce website selling its own brand´s revolutionary mass customized apparel and accessories line while building it´s on line direct sales network.

HC : I love the 3 minute IOU Project video that introduces your concept. It is beautifully made ! You mention in it that the buyer is part of the process. Does that mean the buyer can design the piece they will buy ?

KP:  Thank you am glad you enjoyed the film .When we mention the buyer being a part of the story we mean that they are visible to everyone in the chain as the artisans are. They can take a picture of themselves and link it to the product they have bought to complete the story , talk about themselves and even sell and promote the product through our Trunk Show Host model  The artisans love to see who bought the piece they hand made. We don´t have the buyer designing but they can curate products on our site by becoming a trunk show host which is a great way to get involved and make some money in the process.
HC: Is the idea of IOU unique in the world of fashion ?

KP :We have not seen anything executed like this exactly. Taking heritage artisan sources and working with designers , other artisans and technology to create a modern easy to wear pieces that have full traceability and transparency. But it is clearly a trend as there are many designers and labels who are becoming more and more careful with where and how they source their products. There is a clear demand from the consumer to know more.

HC. The one thing I noticed was the lack of variety in the fabrics. When one thinks of India, the sheer profusion of weaving styles and patterns is what comes to mind. Is this intentional ?

KP : We started the project with the Madras weavers as it is not a small feat to document and give full traceability back to each individual in the supply chain.We wanted to start with one artisan group to ensure we were thorough and also to start with a clear identity . We are already working with other artisan groups in India and overseas to create other product lines going forward.
HC: Why do you think the price point of the your products would be compelling for buyers who have a large number of options to choose from - even if they were looking for something niche and not mass produced ?

KP: Our price points are the same as J Crew and Abercrombie and Fitch which are brands with mass distribution and appeal. At the same price as those brands you as a consumer can have a totally unique piece with an incredible story that is truly helping preserve a traditional craft, we believe that to be a compelling argument

HC: Would you consider sellers on Etsy your competition ?

KP : We don't think we are like etsy , we are more about mass customisation, about aggregating artisan small productions and creating collaborations to address the mass market.We are big fans of ETSY though

HC: What role is social media playing in getting the word out about your fashion line ?

KP: Fundamental, we have been a grassroots movement and the idea has spread as individuals with whom it resonated have taken it upon themselves to move it forward and talk about it. We are incredible grateful and the participation of our customers and Facebook followers has been very important. There are over 400,000 blog entries 1,5 million Google citations of the IOU Project . There is still a long way to go but we are very happy with the journey so far

HC: What are some of the biggest operational challenges you face ?

KP : Right now it is funding to keep up the momentum as we have made a huge investment in this first phase to get the project up and running and it has all been personal. There is a huge amount of interest from big brands who want to create co-branded products and artisan groups who want to work with us to create new product lines. we are a young and small company so keeping up the demand on time and resources just with this is a big challenge.

HC: Where do you see IOU being five years out ?

KP: That it becomes and industry standard to create product with full transparency and traceability that will give its due to everyone involved. That the IOU project becomes a global brand with many many artisan groups involved. There is so much heritage to preserve , so many people whose way of life is threatened in the world. As you mentioned just in India alone the numbers of hand-loom weaving communities is immense.

HC: What has been the response of the artisans to this venture and how are they spreading the word in their community ?

KP: They are incredibly proud to be part of this project. They have never been made to be such a protagonist in this process. These are very skilled and fiercely independent people, they want to preserve their culture and way of life as they work for themselves , all they wanted is to earn a little bit more and not have to compete with cheap machine made imports.

HC: Is IOU strictly about "woven in India" or are you open to considering weavers elsewhere in the world ?

KP: The IOU Project is not about a country , we started in India as I am an Indian and the rich cultural heritage of India was there for me to begin with but we are already working with Artisans in Japan for our real Indigo hand woven selvedge denim which you can see in our current collection. We are being contacted by many artisan groups worldwide and we intent to follow this dream to as far as we can.

Interview with Devajyoti Roy

Devajyoti Roy is an artist with an unique take on contemporary India. As one reviewer describes it "Though realistic in terms of theme and proportion, the paintings assume metaphorical dimension if seen from the perspective of colour-scheme and use of symbols." 

What I found most interesting about his paintings is how he is able to convey expression and communication between subjects of his painting when the faces are color filled blanks without any features. What the viewer make of that expression or the message being conveyed could well be a Rorschach test. Case in point might be this painting titled Rendezvous

It turns out that Mr Roy is a reader of this blog and that is an honor for me. 

For any readers who live or will happen by Mumbai between Nov 14 -  Nov 20 2011, they can check out an exhibition of his paintings at the Jehangir Art Gallery.
 

HC : What is uniquely Indian about your art ?

DR:  India is having cultural exchanges with far flung countries since time immemorial and our folk art, crafts all show influences of many schools of art from all over the world. And till recently, Indian artists had been experimenting with the predominant schools of western art quite unabashedly. It is only while choosing subject matters, that our artists remained uniquely Indian.

Yet there had been a few artists like Jamini Roy and later MF Husain, who had shown originality in formative renderings as well.

Development of a new formative style requires development of a language of expression. In my paintings this language is largely developed from the popular iconography of India. You must have noticed pink-coloured Ganesha idols, or the depiction of Lord Ram in blue. No one ever questions as how can a person have such colours. We just accept them. Thus you see, it is possible to use your own colours of fantasy and yet create a comprehensible image.

Nonetheless colours do have their own chemistry and to create a comprehensible image, one has to develop that grammar. Pseudo-realism is all about that grammar. Its origin is Indian, its grammar, perhaps not.

HC: What is your signature - I mean how would someone recognize the artist from your paintings ?

DR: It was in 2002, that had first introduced the Pseudo-realist forms into my paintings and it is now almost 9 years that I am continuing with the style. The Indian art market took some time to get used to this new genre of art but I think people have now started accepting it.

HC : Among modern day Indian artists, who would you consider your inspiration ?
 

DR:  Jamini Roy is one artist who I admire a lot. At a time, when most Indian artists were experimenting with mainly western styles like cubism and impressionism, here was one man who could develop an uniquely original style of his own. Again for similar reasons, I admire MF Husain, Anish Kapoor and Subodh Gupta.

But while I admire these artists, I am not influenced by them or their styles. In fact the very idea is not to get influenced and do your own.

HC. How easy is it for a young person like yourself establish themselves as a artist in modern day India ?

DR:  Establishing in any creative field always takes time. But the Indian art market is becoming very matured and there is a genuine demand for good works.
The very profile of an Indian art collector is also changing. Unlike in the past, the new collector has good knowledge of what is happening the world over, and has a mind of her own. She does not necessarily buy what her gallery sells her but what she herself thinks is right.

Everywhere around I see people really willing to learn. This had not been so even a decade ago. I have always enjoyed interacting with the new age art collector, who is passionate, questioning and confident.

HC: Have you considered using software such a Photoshop to create art - or perhaps digitally re-imagine what you have created on canvas ?
 

DR : There is nothing wrong in using modern technological tools in creating artworks. Nonetheless, I prefer the traditional methods of sketching, and then painting with brush.

HC : Who mention irony as one of things you try to convey subtly through your art - do you often find viewers getting your message ?

DR: Of course. I am a prominent obituarist of Post-modernism and shun all kinds of ambiguities in art.

Pseudorealism is a style, where something abstract and unreal gets the appeal of reality. The idea is thus to use abstraction to create a comprehensible imagery. But the key word here is ‘comprehensible’.

That is hallmark of my kind of art. 

HC : What advise do you have some someone who wants to become an artist but does not have the ability to get formal training ?

DR : There are both advantages and disadvantages of formal training. The primary advantage of formal training is that it teaches you all the skills of art in one place. In a formal art school, you also get to learn about art-history, philosophy, etc all under one roof.

But the disadvantage of art schools is that they tend to take away your originality. That is why some of the best known artists in India had benefited by not being in any school. This includes such illustrious names Ravindranath Tagore, Ramkinker Baij, Amrita Shergill, MF Hussain and FN Souza.

So I do not think, not having formal training is much of a handicap. One has to be persistent in what one is doing. It is true for any profession, art included.

Random Inspiration

The Child

Some days, I just have to keep my ears open for inspiration. Having the day off today, I was able to take J and her friend A to the museum to check out a couple of art installations I had read about in the local newspaper. A is a very polite child but it is impossible to get a reaction other than "I don't know" when asked for an opinion. So, I had know idea if she enjoyed the outing, if the galleries we went to were the ones she was interested in or if the lunch we ate at the cafe was what she really wanted. 

So imagine my astonishment when we sat down in the lobby on some Neinkamper chairs and A said "In my dream house, I must have these chairs - I simply love them". The passion  in her voice touched something deep inside me - for a ten year old to have a dream home and imagine what it might look like is not entirely unexpected but coming from someone who almost always says " I don't know", it was very special. Beneath the gentle and unassuming surface, I imagine there is a lot of steel and resolve - A might be one of those who tend to their dreams diligently in solitude until they came to fruition. From being frustrated with her at not helping with any decision around their day, I went to having respect for her.

The Adult

DB is given to mulling over things for a while before he is able to fully articulate what he is thinking. Inevitably, the insights come when you least expect it. Today, while running a technical issue at work by me, he segued into our relationship and had this to say about what ails us. "The change I am asking of you is a change in the pattern of thinking about things. What you are doing instead, is reacting to each instance I am upset about and correcting that one thing when tens of other issues similar to it remain unchanged. That is frustrating and tiring both of us - I see no hope and you see no end to the criticisms. You need to change the algorithm and not the data sets - that way your reaction will follow the same pattern in all instances and you won't have to solve each instance as its own problem" We have had a million variants of this discussion from the time we got married. However, this is the first time, I felt like we were close to a solution.

Burst Bubble

I have been in the workforce for what seems like a very long time though my "dream" retirement age will likely not be met . In all this time, the one accomplishment that I am truly proud of is my ability to manage difficult people and situations without letting it impact my quality of life. I did not come to this state naturally or over-night - years of hard-work and perseverance got me there - or so I thought.

A week ago, that accomplishment took a real drubbing at the hands of a co-worker. He is our on-site technical lead from one of India's largest outsourcing companies. They have over thousand resources working for this client and have the muscle that goes with an engagement that size. This man found it impossible to accept that he had to report to me - a woman, a desi and a local consultant (as opposed to a full time employee of the client). It was a combination that was too much for him to stomach - he simply did not feel that I had any authority to ask him anything about his work. I brought my years of experience dealing with insubordination to bear on this situation. He went back and forth between aggressive and compliant behavior, we had some process gains but the system continued to grow more and more unstable. Every other week, a major fire drill would be required to keep the engine running.

I was brought into the role that I am in to provide technical direction and mentoring as needed - specially when a system bottleneck is hurting the team's overall operating efficiency. To that end, every recommendation I made, he met with vehement opposition if not outright rejection and continued to grow the patch-work of hastily put together fixes that has now brought the system to its knees. He is trained in a set of tools but has no foundational knowledge of technology to buttress it. He finds himself placed in the position of a technical architect /lead designer when his skills are more compatible with a mid-level developer. To compensate of his deficiencies, he works almost round the clock, micro-manages the offshore team and makes it impossible for anyone to get past him and to the issues to see if they can help.

On that day, in the middle of an IM conversation, the man walks up to my desk in a physically aggressive manner and talks in a tone of voice that I have seen used by domestic help in India during altercations with their employers. This is simply not the standard of behavior I have seen in my workplace in all these years - here in America or back in India. I was completely dumb-founded and too afraid to engage him in a discussion not knowing what he may decide to do if provoked any further. This was the third such incident and I felt not taking any action would would embolden him to a dangerous level.

I reported the incident to my management and the whole process of resolution was set in motion. In net, I was made to feel like a hysterical woman who thanks to an over-active imagination had read way more into the situation than was warranted. The Indian company told me that this man did not owe me an apology because he did not feel that he had been out of line. I would now need to find someone else to act as the go-between to get work done through him - they had asked him to stop all interaction with me immediately. The client does not want to get involved directly because the neither of us are full time employees with them. So I have now become the official problem - the woman who failed to manage the man she was required to manage and has turned that failure into a inconvenience for all concerned. It was a well orchestrated move and everyone was complicit in it - including the client who shied away from taking any direct action knowing fully well there has been a pattern of aggressive, unprofessional behavior for months. Then man got away from all of this looking like the victim and with no consequence at all.

Not only has this incident burst my bubble about my ability to manage tough people and situations, it has also made me realize what my girlfriends have told me many times before - that the moment a woman shows signs of weakness, she becomes the pariah in the workplace. No one wants to have anything to do with her or her imaginary issues. This is the modern day, workplace equivalent of being made to wear the Scarlet Letter. If you feel like you are being discriminated against of being treated differently, it will be chalked up to imagination because nothing is really being said or done to me. Everyone wishes this thing had never happened and more than that they wish I had not started all this stuff up and caused disruption to the normal order of things. The man who offended me has the support of the vendor who knows the client will not rock the boat too much given how deeply entrenched they are in their organization. They want enough time to pass so I move on or get over it so they can continue to go about their business as usual. For my satisfaction, they have left the incident unresolved.

Remarriage Lessons

In the past year, several readers of this blog have asked me to share my experience of being married for the second time. I have blogged off and on about it over time, but this attempts to bring some of the key themes together.

Being Owed Happiness

This is my experience with second marriage and it may not be true for everyone else. Ever so often, I find myself falling into the trap of "being owed happiness". I waited long enough for this man, ergo he must be the answer to all that ails me. Why must I still be expected to work on finding my own happiness or put forth the effort to make the relationship a happy one. I already did my time in my previous marriage - so it is not fair to be given anything but a perfect marriage this time. 

It is as if the long, frustrating and often hopeless waiting to get to this state entitles me to happiness without any further ado. When that does not readily happen - I decide I am the injured party and DB has a responsibility to make it right. It would be okay if I could just let it go being injured and aggrieved - I also get infuriated at him for not doing his part. It is not often that I pause to consider what he might expect from me and if I am fulfilling his vision of a perfect union.

The Insecure Child

We have only one child (mine) between the two of us, so I have it a lot easier than a lot of couples who marry for the second time and need to blend their families together. Even so, there are challenges and complications due to the presence of a child. Mine was acutely insecure for several months into our marriage. On the one hand she had this compulsive need make sure DB was taking care of Mommy and treating her right, on the other hand, when she saw us happy together she grew afraid of losing her mother to a relative stranger. 

Out of the blue she could burst into tears and shut herself in her room. Her suffering was hard for us to see but she would be inconsolable - in a heartbeat I would have gone from being the center of her universe to being her biggest enemy. I got her a notebook and encouraged her to write about how she was feeling - not hold anything back no matter how hurtful of offensive they may be towards DB and I . I told her I would not read her journal until she was ready to share it with me. This exercise proved to be quite cathartic for her and in a few months the emotions were not quite so out of control.

She wanted DB as a father but could not accept him in the role of my husband. There was love and hate for him in equal measure.The two forces worked in equal and opposite directions bringing a lot of stress into the family. It took a lot of reassurance from both of us and me demonstrating to her that her position in my life had not diminished in any way. In time, that alleviated her sense of insecurity. DB would be the understanding adult for the most part and allow her emotions to play out but every once in a while he would grow petulant and feel left out of our "family unit" of two. It was left up to me to be the level-headed, peace-making adult who had to cast aside her own feelings and work on restoring harmony in the family. Between meeting the demands of J and DB, I felt completely worn out.

Losing Friends and Isolation

Both my husband and I have shed several friendships in the wake of our marriage. On his end, these were friends that had felt compassion or pity for him because he was floundering partner-less and without specific direction in life - for a very long time. He was one of those guys they had pegged as remaining single for life. While they had all started out together, these friends had left him far behind in achieving life's milestones. By inviting him into their families, they got an opportunity to feel better about themselves and rejoice in their superior standing in life. DB for his part appreciated being made a part of their lives and having someplace to go for the holidays. It was an arrangement that worked out well for everyone concerned.This pity-fest had been going on for years and all at once my presence ended it. 

I had been a feel good project for several of my girlfriends - both married and single. They could do little things to help me out, reduce the burden of my responsibilities as a single mom without inconveniencing themselves seriously. By ceasing to be single, I had taken away their opportunity to be good Samaritans and they were quick to dump me as well. I came to the sad and sobering realization that these "friends" really did not understand the person I was or have much interest in her for that matter. So once the circumstances changes and my project worthiness was gone, they found out that the friendship was non-existent. 

In net, we are relatively friendless and in need of building a social life all over again - the very idea is irksome. Some days, we don't even know where to begin - everyone we know, has friends that go back decades - we just cannot fit into their social network. Then there are much younger people who are still settling in, getting know other families like their own - we have nothing in common with that crowd either. From each of us being alone in our two separate islands, we have come together on one and are alone there together. A new relationship is never helped by social isolation and yet that is a force we have to contend with in addition to everything else.

Parents

We have found out that parents get used to us being single and dependent on them a lot more than they would have otherwise been. As much as they would like for our lives to return to normalcy and for us to find a life partner, they are often unable to relinquish what they had from us in the years past. My mother (when she visited)  for instance ran my household like it was her own, without any interference from anyone. I was too desperate (and grateful) for the help to question her authority or jurisdiction. She is now failing to recognize that her role has changed and she needs to play a very minor part in my family. We are all finding out there is a significant gap between her ability to accept DB in theory and accept him in reality.

Communication and Relationship

We both except the other person to communicate clearly what they want. Yet for the smallest things to take so much back and forth tires us out. We have the social roles and responsibilities of a couple with a ten year old child, when the marriage in not even two years old. What would come naturally to a couple of our vintage, takes a lot of doing for us to accomplish. 

With that small tasks become Herculean efforts and we are both left emotionally exhausted. After having so much energy expended in setting appropriate expectation for mundane things, we have none left to work on the much more serious and arduous business of cementing a new relationship - it inevitably gets pushed to the back-burner. The initial spark does not have a fighting chance to blossom into a steady glow that we can count on for life - the forces of responsibility constantly work to extinguish it. Unless we stay vigilant and continue to make it our priority we could get ourselves into trouble.

At the end of a year and a half of marriage, we find that we segued into an old marriage immediately after courtship. The honeymoon period couples enjoy after their first marriage just did not happen for us.DB found himself thrust head first into a domestic situation where the show had to go on - the child had to be taken care of, sent to school, taken to her activities and somewhere in in middle of all that he had to form a romantic relationship with the mother. Add to that a couple of job changes, relocation and a buying a home and what little energy anyone may have for relationship building would quickly dissipate. Most people who meet us cannot tell that our marriage is so new or that J and DB are not biologically related. While that may be a testament to the hard-work that has gone into forming this family, it is also a telling sign of what we are missing out on as a couple.

There is a certain edginess and brittleness even about a single mother - she has no choice but to be bold, assertive and independent. She has to make the calls about her household and children. There is no one else - often not even a sounding board. Adversity can take the most vulnerable and dependent among us and turn them into a force of nature. That is the personality I presented to DB when I first met him - it was not as much a matter of presentation as it was the point in time truth about my nature. He found that strength and confidence incredibly attractive. 

As a wife, I have failed to tend to the positive aspects of that nature - like some women stop taking care of their physical fitness and appearance, I ceased to worry about being the fittest I could be mentally and emotionally. I was too relieved to have respite to be concerned about what effect my "laziness" was having my own well being and on the relationship. In response, DB did not feel the need to be all that he had been when we first met - in his case his physical health bore the brunt of the resentment and disappointment he felt. Often, with these things the damage happens first and the epiphany comes about much later. I am still learning to curb my stubborn streak and not turn this into a staring contest. And that is easier said than done.

Feeling Normal

I never subscribed to the idea that a single person or a single parent is any less or different from a married person. I would go out of my way to prove to myself that I was alright and that my child was not being deprived of a "normal" life. Yet, there always this nagging sensation of being an outsider to normal (in my case suburban) society. I had nothing in common with the stay-at-home PTA moms. I still have very little in common with them but having a husband affords me a small entry into their world. 

Similarly, having a child makes it easier for my husband to be the "regular" daddy when they run errands together or go out play tennis. He does not have to be the guy that comes alone to brunch every Sunday - he has a ten year old her can take along if he wanted to. Suddenly the waitresses are all smiles and friendly - he is welcome into the "normal" fold. He is the kind of dad they appreciate - bonding with his little girl over pancakes, milkshake and hash browns. Normalcy is a pretty big deal for someone who has been on the fringe for as long as we have.

Figurative Loss

Recently, I have suffered some figurative losses. You would think that not being material or tangible they may hurt less but in fact, it can be felt just as strongly if not more. Being in that frame of mind, I found these lines from an article by Olivia Harrison particularly poignant :

"Tragedy is much more of an adventure than joy. I am not saying joy is over-rated. But happiness is fleeting; it exists in the present. Tragedy casts a long and persistent shadow with the power to dim even the most perfect moment. It also has the potential to follow us to the end. We don't stop to analyze happiness but when grief and strife occur we recount the events leading up to it over and over. It wakes us from our sleep as we try to figure out how and where it all went wrong."

She writes this in the context of her husband's George Harrison's imminent death but the idea of raking through the content of tragedy over and over again to make sense of it transfers to the kind of figurative loss I have experienced. There was something then that is gone now. When it was there, it was important but I spent no energy to analyze what I had and what it meant for me. In losing it, indeed the perfectness of my present moment is greatly dimmed.

J's Decade

For as long as I can remember, big changes have happened to me once every decade. The birth of J coincided with the end of my first marriage - those two incidents set in motion a cascading wave of events whose tumult is only beginning to subside now. Each year on J's birthday, I would find myself measuring how far into my "decade of strife" I was and in my heart I knew her tenth would be unlike any before or after. It would spell the symbolic end.

Call it what you will, determination, wishful thinking, visualizing the future as I would have it be in my dream - some combination of all that, but I visited that tenth birthday many, many times in the past. With each visit, I refined what was in and what was not, who was included and who was not not - it would be the year when things would be made "right" by J. 

It would be the year when the waiting for Godot would be over, we could come out of the "phase" that we were in. I was deeply resentful of anyone who so much as suggested that my life may be subject to some limitations being a single mom, but could not deny to myself that J and I lived a little on the fringe - not entirely in the conventional way. 

To that end, I would become a nervous wreck the week of J's birthday party - nothing I ever did felt quite "right"; I certainly had no ability to plan or anticipate the unexpected. Yet to prove that J and I were doing just as fine as any other family, I would get bent out of shape trying to host a birthday party for her that conveyed "normalcy". My anxiety of social situations absolutely peaked around her birthday - getting the day over with was all I could think about. Yet I did not want to disappoint her or have her sense how I was feeling - that would be unfair. 

This year, DB stepped in and made the day seem easier than it has in nine years. We had seven of J's friends over. The had chips and salsa, pizza and ice-cream cake along with pink lemonade and ginger ale. We hosted a bunch of chatty little girls happy to play hide and seek and lounge around the big TV in the basement - no one wanted to leave when the parents came to pick them up. There was absolutely nothing complicated about what we did. We had no theme for the party, no games or activities organized, we cooked nothing - and yet everyone had a great time. 

In years past, I did a lot more and only feel stressed and dissatisfied with the outcome - the more I strove to give the impression that I had everything under control and could pull of what a stay at home mom could (single-handedly no less), the more contrived the results would be. The combination of a home and a partner made such a world of difference - the two things that had been missing for the the past decade. J had a "regular" tenth birthday that had her surrounded by family and friends in her own home - just as I had always wanted it to be. For once, I did not have to try too hard.

New Meaning

Read this analysis of the lyrics of Norwegian Wood and what is says about Lennon made for a fun lunch hour break a few days ago. To think that the words of a song could be taken to mean something so far removed from what a listener may glean from it casually is quite remarkable.

Maybe such is the fate of any piece of art - there is the original intent (if any at all) of the creator , the spin of the punditry and the meaning conveyed to each layperson who comes in to contact with. I will find it hard to listen to this song again without paying attention to the words and the meaning someone has ascribed to them - specially because it is so far removed from anything I would have imagined. In a sense, this song is spoiled for me.

Idefinitely Wounded

Since she was a baby, J would unaccountably turn delerious with joy - her exurberance was so contagious that it was impossible for anyone to feel blue around her. Today was one of those days. I pray that she always has the ability to be happy for no reason at all.

Reading this Atlantic article about the correlation between early adversity and depression, planted a little seed of fear in my heart. J has known more than her fair share of "early adversity". I was so consumed by doing all that it took to provide for her basic needs and stay gainfully employed that I was never able to be a real mother to her. My attention span for her was non-existent, it took very little provocation for me to become really angry and I never felt well rested. She learned to entertain herself, make do with very little and make the most of what few opportunities came her way. She learned to survive and thrive in a situation that was less than ideal.

With DB coming into our lives, it fell on J once again to cope with change and uncertainty and all things considered, she did remarkably well. In the last several months, my attention has been divided between a new spouse, career transitition and home buying. J adjusted to my (and our) circumstances as she always has. Today, I paused to wonder what the cost of that adjustment might have been. Seeing her being irrationally exurberant today was a reminder of my responsibility - she has a precious gift that I have to protect and keep out of harm's way. If I failed, I would be identifintely wounded.

Twice Shy

In one year of being married once again, I have come to realize that when people such as DB and I come together in a second marriage, most of our energies are expended in navigating minefields. A certain tone of voice, a gesture, a mannerism, food habit or what have you will trigger a bad memory. Suddenly, the past will come into the foreground with vengeance, completely obscuring what little you have built together with pain-staking effort. Like a friend of ours said, a new marriage (even it is the second time for both) is a like a messy, kicking, screaming infant and we would be well advised to treat it as such instead of expecting adult behavior from it. 

Yet, more frequently than not, we expect the other person to "know better" given the lessons learned from mistakes past. We expect adult behavior from the bawling, unreasonable infant that is our marriage. When expectations are not met we are quick to indulge in self-pity, give up on the partner's ability to ever change. We blame the other for errors and omissions made in their previous marriage. What is more we accuse the other of going down the same destructive path because they are incapable of learning ; unwilling to change. Then the moment passes, tempers cool, reason, love and compassion return. After the clouds lift, I am able to see the many amazing changes DB has made in the past year, he sees that I am almost everything he wanted his wife to be. 

Post epiphany we are in rapprochement mode - and life is good once again. The days flow languidly like a brook meandering through quiet woods - until we hit the next obstacle. We want to believe this is no different from any new marriage but we do know that it is - indeed in very significant ways. Every marriage takes time to be broken in - the first time around, you are both willing to do a lot more to make it happen, you have many dreams and the energy to fulfill them. By when one marriage ends, the years of being alone are over and you start over, a lot of the energy has already been expended. You have the compelling need to make up for lost time and pretend your life had always been "on track". What is more, you want to prove to yourself that you have wisdom you once lacked and this time there would be no mistakes. 

That is the narrative you bring into all your social relationships as well. So I'd rather not have to explain why DB, J and I have different last names. I would rather pretend that DB has been in J's life forever and not want to talk about the time in her life when he was not around. It is as if the strength of this marriage and our newly formed family unit is based on how "old" and "comfortable" it looks to the world outside. It gives us the much need affirmation to pass for a family that has grown organically instead of having been cobbled together. We don't want to come across as still trying to figure things out, not having our act quite together yet, we want to look self-assured and confident with answers to everything figured out already. The pressures of those largely unrealistic goals come into the relationship and strain it even more. 

Every day this past year has been a learning experience for me. We both thought having been through a marriage once before would count for something this time. That experience as we are finding out is more counterproductive and disruptive than anything else. Time will tell if it contributed anything positive to our union.