El Sancho: Why I am a Mexican Man

I was listening to an NPR discussion on life insurance in minority communities (because NPR can make even this subject interesting to me, which is why I should donate some cash).  The insurance expert explained that a major reason Mexican men won't buy life insurance is El Sancho.  El Sancho is the guy your wife takes up with after you're dead and who will spend all your life insurance money.  I've always been bothered by the possibility that a second wife could spend IRA money I accrued before I got married.  Now I have a name for it!

Halloween

Every Halloween, I think about this woman I never knew. I've linked to the piece she wrote on seeing her third-grade daughter off on Halloween night, the last Halloween of this mother's life.

I bought this book for my then eight-year old daughter so that, if anything happened to me, she would know. Marjorie Williams would tell her how being a mom feels.


The Woman at the Washington Zoo ... - Google Books

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

I always keep a pack of matches in my jacket pocket.  Nothing else is permitted - no ponytail holders, no Kleenex, nothing that is used for the care and feeding of someone else.  I haven't smoked for years and have no desire to do so now.  The matches just remind me of me, when I didn't have to take care of anyone else* and I could smoke because I was never going to die.



*Standard disclaimer:  Of course taking care of my children is the most wonderful thing in the world to me, blah blah blah.

Tales of a Smarty Pants

I found an old journal of mine, one of many that have the first twelve pages filled followed by a hundred that are empty.  One of the few entries was from five years ago, and the memory made me laugh.  Also, I'm too lazy to think up anything new, so here it is:

I saw my eight-year old self at the playground last night.  As Belinda and Bill threw and swung at T-Ball practice, Julia and I hit the playground equipment.  There, I saw the kid I'd have been if I were a boy.  Just the tiniest bit chubby and with the short, puffy hair I know so well, he was playing Frisbee keepaway with three other boys (and I could tell they were only playing with him because it was his Frisbee).  He (who could have been me) fell and said, "I think I hurt my cranium."  One of the normal boys asked, "What's that?"  My silent answer was, "Head."  He (who could have been me) answered, "It's a part of the skull.  You know....cranium, maxilla, mandible..."  Later, sitting next to the normal boy on the playground mountain, he (who could have been me) asked, "Did you hurt your phalange?"  The other boy looked disgusted and said, "Why do you say that?  It sounds dumb."  It took me thirty years to learn that people don't particularly like it when you have all the answers. 

Handbags and Gladrags

I admit that I have absolutely no perspective here; I gratefully welcome the guidance of those who do.  As my older daughter enters middle school, one of her Top Ten Issues of the Day is the Vera Bradley backpack.  For those who don't know (as I did not until my daughter enlightened me), the Vera Bradley backpack is a quilted, floral concoction that puts me in mind of a Laura Ashley (is she still around?) throw pillow.  The price tag, of course, is ridiculous.  (It's a backpack!  For a sixth-grader!)  My daughter knows that she has absolutely zero chance of getting one (and since her after-school job is to badger me for a cell phone, it's not a battle she picks).  Still, this damn backpack comes up in her conversation more often than is remotely interesting.  Leading me to my quandary:

I realize that, as far as fashion spending goes, I'm a reactionary.  At this moment, I'm proudly wearing capri pants and a t-shirt that are new-to-me from Goodwill.  I'm free with the information that my purse is a Target ($17).  Perhaps this is just as obnoxious as sporting logos that broadcast the fortune someone else paid for theirs.  I also appreciate that since (clothing-wise) I could have pretty much whatever I wanted while I was growing up, it's not an issue to me now.  I don't carry that handbaggage from my past, if you will.  I know for a fact that a label can't make you popular or get you a boyfriend, the only things that really matter (and I wish I was kidding).  So I need answers to these questions:

1)  If I have a blanket embargo on these Items of Label, will that just make my kid obsessed with what she's missing?  Will she believe that everything would have been different/better if I'd just let her wear the same stuff as All The Other Girls?

2)  What if she uses her own money?  Even if I think it's a horrible choice and I fear it will only spawn more of the same, is it a choice she's allowed to make?  Part of me worries that the damned Vera Bradley backpack will get attention enough to bolster her skewed perceptions of what's important.

3)  What if the Item of Label is on sale?  Here the issue is more the shirts from Aeropostale and Abercrombie and Fitch.  I'll certainly not spring for full retail, but what if it's on clearance (my own personal kryptonite)?  Though price is not the issue here, it's still supporting the idea that we want our clothing to send a very clear and precise message.  I realize that all clothing does that, but I just hate for the message to literally be spelled out across her chest.

Got answers?

I've Completely Changed My Mind

Screw this whole idea about growing older = gaining a valuable wisdom that, in the end, makes it worth it.  I'm starting to see that growing older = hearing news that gets progressively worse. 

My dear aunt got some bad medical news.  My friend's father is struggling more and more with his Alzheimer's.  A neighbor is facing bankruptcy because of the costs of her husband's mental hospitalization.  Another friend just buried her mother, who was laid waste by Huntington's.  Yet another friend's cousin, a youngish mother of four, has seen the return of her Stage IV breast cancer. 

Now, someone who sees each day as a gift would point out that, number one, I am blessed with friends and family in the first place.  The same person might say that with each breath there is hope and in death there is peace.  He/she might add that the joy is in this journey.  To all this I reply, "Well fuck that."

I would very much like someone to change my mind about this.  Personally, I don't think it can be done.

The Girl on the Plane

Flying back home from our summer vacation, we squeezed ourselves into one of those planes so small even I almost hit my head on the ceiling.  I sat next to my older daughter, with my husband and younger daughter in front of us; next to me sat a girl I used to be.  In many ways she was foreign to me:  her purse was heavily logo-ed, her skin tanned, her hair blonde.  Most notably different was that, despite being a good size or two larger than optimal, she had no qualms about scarfing down a Wendy's burger and fries right before take-off.  (For us problem eaters, such public feeding is reflexively avoided.) But, as I listened to her talking at her friends seated behind me, I recognized her as myself when I was, like she, in my early twenties.

Apparently, she and her friends were returning from a friend's wedding.  Among other things I learned during the trip, she loves her job, she's miffed that her mother posted a family portrait that was rather unflattering, and she golfs.  She was me because she was certain her glittering young life both charmingly fascinated and inspired twinges of envy.  She spoke as though to the room (or the cabin), neither lowering her voice nor allowing interruption of her performance.  I so remember being her and my certainty that any sane person would want to be me - young, pretty, smart, my life ahead of me - and even more certain that a captive audience would be appreciatively amused by my ruminations.

Now, as the captive audience, I know different, since I wasn't charmed as much as mildly irritated.  Even my eleven year-old, who had at first been watching the show with undisguised fascination, became bored with the self-absorption.  Since I often recall the girl that I was with a great deal of wincing, I didn't mind being reminded that the behavior of many, many girls that age is worth wincing over.  On the other hand, knowing that she viewed me either a) with pity for my bland existence as a middle-aged mom or b) not at all because to her I'm invisible just made my cranky (it had been a long travel day). 

When I was a freshman in college, I wrote an essay for English about how awful aging would be.  I got an A on a treatise discussing the loss of passion and vitality that each decade of life would bring.  I preached that I was enjoying the best time of my life (when I was in fact not all that happy) because the highs would never be as high (despite the lows not being so low), and all the true adults I knew seemed so lacking in intensity.  My roommate, who didn't even like me particularly, asked to make a copy of it, because my realizations were so tragic and so true. 

Sheesh.

We just watched a relatively new movie called "According to Greta" with Hilary Duff and Ellen Burstyn.  Hillary Duff is Greta, a teenager with the melancholy self-absorption that first arouses empathy but then just exasperates.  Ellen Burstyn is her grandmother.  Greta assumes that life is downhill after seventeen, because nothing will be as exciting as it was then.  Her grandmother explains that when she herself was seventeen, she didn't even know who she was, that it's the learning you do each day of your life that makes the next day even more valuable.   I've learned enough to know I could never tell that to the girl on the plane because a) no one asked me (and you wouldn't believe how long it's taken me to learn that my wisdom is not appreciated when unsolicited) and b) you can only really believe it by living it.