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Families are odd, odd things. Oh, not my family, the one I created, my two boys and me. We’re great!
I mean my other family — the one that includes my mother, father and sister.
I won’t get into too many of the particulars of what went on in that tiny brick house in Queens, blessedly close to the best park in New York City besides Central Park and on a block teeming with a bazillion kids so there was always someone to play with.
Suffice it to say that for the longest time I didn’t realize that no one else tore paper napkins in half (to make the 260-count package last even longer? Who knows?); that other families weren’t watching black-and-white TVs whose screen was split in half, with one half showing whatever program was on upside down (years after everyone — really, everyone — had a color TV); and that going to the airport a few times a month to hang out on the observation deck watching planes take off and land wasn’t exactly considered entertainment by most people.
There are a lot of things you can control in life and a lot you can’t. The family you’re born into is one of the “can’t” things. I always thought that everyone else’s family was a bit more “normal” than mine, but this was based solely on my gut (and since I'm lactose intolerant and have other, um, GI issues, perhaps this isn't the best gauge). It wasn’t until I got older and started asking my friends and interviewing people as a journalist that I realized that everybody’s family is odd. There is no normal! Still, I certainly never expected to find a family that shared some of the same quirks that mine have — until I did.
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When I heard about the death of Maria del Carmen Brousada, the 69-year-old single mother who made the news three years ago by becoming the oldest woman in the world to give birth, I was transported back to the summer I turned 8.
My family had gone to visit relatives in Israel. For whatever reason, my parents thought I was too young to join them and my sister, then 11, to Eliat, the southernmost tip, so they left me for a long weekend with those relatives.
The day they left, my relatives — who barely spoke English — did what most relatives would do to entertain a child they couldn’t say much to: we went to the movies. I can’t remember the name of the movie anymore, but I remember the opening scene. There was a house fire that kills a young boy’s parents, and he is left an orphan. That night, I had a nightmare that my parents died. I woke up screaming, and my great-grandmother, in her 90s, came in to soothe me. “Vas ist los, kind?”
Needless to say, she didn’t help much. I wanted my parents!
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The singles event at the spacious Piazza Market in San Francisco was about to start when a pretty middle-aged woman walked in, sat down at my table and surveyed the scene. I knew just what she was observing.
“Why are there always more women who come to these things?” I asked, seeking a conversation entry point.
“Men don’t want to improve themselves,” she said. “They’re lazy.”
Well, this is shaping up to be a typical singles event, I thought, although in all honesty this was my first singles event, and not one even one solely to meet members of the opposite sex, so how the heck would I know, anyway?
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It may not have been an easy question in the past, but it’s certainly a tougher one to answer nowadays: Are you happy?
I have never felt more unsure about my career — newspapers aren’t exactly a growth industry — and I am seriously questioning whether I’ll be able to hold onto my house and help my kids with their college education. I don’t have much in the way of a retirement fund, and a number of big-ticket things are broken around the house. In other words, there are a lot of things going on that could — should? — make me nervous, pissed off or just plain unhappy.
But, I am happy. And oddly, so are a lot of young adults even though they're facing a world in much worse shape than I did when I was their age.
What gives?
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When it comes to technology, I'd have to say I'm not one of the outliers. I only got a DVD player a few years ago, and that's because it was a gift (never mind that my TV is about 12 years old and isn't flat-screened). I was forced into getting a CD player, but still have my turntable and cassette player. My iPod is so old that it can't load any new songs onto it without freezing up, so I'm forced to listen to the songs that were my "fave" songs — three years ago. I have a serious love/hate with Twitter and Facebook, and with four e-mail accounts at work in addition to my personal e-mail account — meaning hundreds of e-mails a day — I am starting to hate e-mail, period.
And when I reluctantly fell for an ad pitch to upgrade my basic but serviceable cell phone to a fancy Blackberry for free, I hated it and after a week I switched phones with my older son.
Of course, I grew up in a family that was the last family in the world to get a color TV. My father was so against it that he rebelled by watching our old B&W TV for years after it suffered some sort of malfunction that split the screen in half, with one half displayed upside down.
OK, I'm not that weird, but all this technology often makes me ache for a time when I didn't feel so plugged in all the time.
So I've wondered — is technology really bringing people together or is it yet another diversion that keeps us from connecting on a genuine level?
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I stopped into Loehman’s in San Francisco recently while waiting for my car to be serviced and, of course, found a “must-have.” On sale. As I stood at the register counter, the sales clerk said, “Oh, you have a birthday coming up.” (I’m a member of the “insider club,” where the store keeps track of such things)
“You get 15 percent off, and happy birthday!”
“Thank you, but I don’t want them any more. I’ve had enough!” I joked.
“Yes you do,” she said, quietly and sternly.
I immediately got what she meant. And she’s right. It was days after the death of Farah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to be dead just yet, although I know I will be one day. So, I must continue to have birthdays and perhaps should start really celebrating them.
The transition from 30 to 40 was weird, 40 to 50 even weirder. The slide from 50 to 60? Well, it certainly isn’t pretty for a woman.
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My friend is finally pregnant after years of the pain — emotionally, physically and financially — of fertility explorations.
Which, of course, makes her an Oprah show — everyone wants to rush in with his or her opinion and story, often bordering on a Stephen King horror novel, about 36 hour labors, last-minute C-sections, lactation woes, lack of sleep, endless feedings …
There’s only one other life event in which people feel so free to divulge and advise, and that’s divorce.
So when I saw her recently — she looked so radiant and happy — I wanted none of that. Instead, I told her what I thought was the key to having a baby: Saving the marriage.
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When my first-born was young, I was determined to raise a nonsexist child.
There would be as many play cooking utensils as cars, as many dolls as dinosaurs, exposure to as many positive female role models as men.
As usual, the children shall the lead the adults.
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I’m feeling like I’m a little behind the times, well, maybe the high times.
I was all ready to blog about boozing suburban moms after reading author Stefanie Wilder-Taylor’s confession in her Mommy Track’d column “Make Mine a Double: Tales of Twins & Tequila” that she had a drinking problem, when I discover that moms have moved on to pot — just like we warn our kids!
“Middle-aged, middle-class soccer moms are smoking pot ... a lot. These women aren't stoners: they're teachers, lawyers, and, perhaps, even your neighbor who prefers puffing a joint to sipping chardonnay,” writes Gina Kaysen Fernandes in “Marijuana Mamas!” on Momlogic.
OMG! Will crack and heroin be next?
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