Author Archives: SandraFalcon

Parisian summer, part 4

Last week we went on a 4-day trip to Normandy. We’d initially reserved a B&B, where after a bit of back and forth leading up to our trip, the hosts told us –rather angrily– that there was nothing they could/would do to accommodate our request for breakfast either in our room or outside. They would keep tables one meter apart, mainly because they were required to, and maybe we could eat after everyone else had eaten. But outside or elsewhere or even near an open window within the dining room? No, and they resented guests requesting anything that wasn’t mandated within the country’s current Covid restrictions (which they also seemed to resent). Because how dare guests use the pandemic to “make up their own rules!” We promptly canceled that reservation, further angering the B&B folks: “If you are so afraid for your child, then maybe you shouldn’t have come to Europe with him.”

On this, they have a legitimate point, because needless to say, we almost didn’t come. The pandemic has required of all of us whole new levels of assessing and balancing risk and fears alongside values and priorities. Right? While this certainly isn’t exclusively true for parents, those of us with kids have suffered with them, intensely, and have been desperate for ways to give them the experiences they love and need and have missed the most. I have empathized with parents for whom the first urgency was to get their kids to school in person, or to their sport activities, or to sleep-away camp this summer. For our family, that thing we were most eager for as our kid’s parents was travel.

clockwise: Teotihuacán, our canal boat in Scotland (both in 2018), the view from our Athens hotel, trip to Spain (both in 2019): We love travel!

Nevertheless, there’s a whole list of criteria, even just one of which would’ve made us pull the plug on this trip. David and I talk a lot about the many variables that had to align, and how amazing it is that they did. This is true of any trip or highly anticipated family event, but so much more heightened and high-stakes-feeling during these times. So our conversations since arriving here often alternate between, “Thank god we made it here when we did” and “Were we crazy to do this?” We’ve also all confessed that we thought it was never going to happen.

Infection rates have (again) gotten worse since we’ve been in France, which raises all of our doubts, anxieties and fears. At least the Health Pass has now been extended to dining establishments here. As dystopian as it is to be asked “Have you been vaccinated?” or to have a QR code scanned upon arriving at a restaurant, it’s also reassuring. And we have not seen anyone not comply, much less yell or assault an employee for doing their job.

This restaurant had signs for the Health Pass everywhere.

Good thing we’d gotten those QR codes when we did, too, because in the past week they’ve become a lot harder to obtain. More testing tents, with longer lines, have popped up in places. Some places routinely scan our codes, some simply ask as though to cover their bases, because there is enforcement. At one place where we ate, the kind server asked us a little timidly whether we’d be able to produce a Health Pass, and accepted our verbal yes as good enough. Inside, there were plain-clothes folks with an orange armband that said Police on it; soon, they were going table to table, asking diners to produce proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test within the past 48 hours. Can you imagine something like this happening in the US? (One place didn’t seem to be doing anything (we got out of there pretty fast); I wonder if they’ll soon be visited by the orange-arm-banded police?)

part of an email David received from the US Embassy in France re: applying for the Health Pass. The process has gotten harder since we obtained ours pretty easily from a pharmacy weeks ago.

Unlike the B&B hosts, everyone else we have met throughout our stay in this country has been courteous, warm, welcoming. We ended up at a wonderful hotel in Bayeux, and our days in Normandy were unforgettable in many good ways. Our time in France this summer is coming to an end, and soon we get to face mandate controversies at home. I also have a feeling I’m not done hearing the “well if you were so concerned for your child, maybe you shouldn’t have taken him to Europe” retort. We still don’t know whether we were wrong to do this, and we won’t know until after we’ve been home for a while. Right now, we’re still so very glad we did.

the wonderful Hotel D’Argouges in Bayeux!
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Parisian Summer, part 3

Well folks, we went to Disneyland Paris. I confess I’d always wanted to go since it opened in 1992. Finally, with a long stay here, it felt less embarrassing to make a case for a couple of days of Le Tacky Entertainment.

First, I expected Disneyland Paris to be very Frenchified compared to the parks in the US. It was and it wasn’t.

It was in language, obviously. So much fun hearing Jack Sparrow, C3PO, and Buzz Lightyear all speaking French! I have no idea how well all the puns we heard in English translated, though. There was an entire section dedicated to the movie Ratatouille, with an adorable ride, as well as a few other rides that aren’t in the US. Other Europeanized elements were the types of soda offered (a lot less sugary), and maybe more of the snack bars offered crepes and waffles than we’d find in the US.

C3PO is fluent in millions of languages 🙂

Perhaps you’ve heard that the French turn their noses up at all things Disney and at having a Disney park in their country? Well that was definitely not our experience! A good nine out of ten people around us were French, and boy did they love their merch! Some were dressed in head-to-toe Disney stuff, and I literally mean head to toe: hats & headbands, shoes, and backpacks. It was Mickey-ear everything, Stitch was hugely popular, and there were lots and lots of little girls in princess dresses (Lord help us, I only saw one dressed as Rey Skywalker).

sign @ Pirates of the Caribbean

Also? The food was crap! Ugh. Mostly burgers and fried chicken. After days of eating gloriously in Paris, I had somehow hoped that Disneyland Paris had a higher standard than American Disney parks, but hell no, my friends. What is up with that? One night we had dinner at a place that served hotdogs and chicken nuggets, where the staff was dressed like baseball players, and they sold Budweiser beer. The place was just off Main Street USA. I looked all around me at the décor and vibe, and it struck me that many people there had probably never been to the US. To them, that was probably representative of what the United States is like. Oof. Surreal and disconcerting. A lot to unpack.

Distancing signs on the floor were everywhere. Some people followed them, many did not.

Regarding the Travel in the Time of Covid? Masks were required at all times including outdoors, and compliance was once again decent. One thing that was frustrating was a lack of opportunities to sit outside for meals. The hotel we chose had a bunch of tables outside, but didn’t allow guests to eat breakfast there. <eye roll> We therefore decided to get our breakfast through room service, as we were told it was included in what we’d already paid for it, and we’d only have to pay whatever went over the pre-paid amount. That did not turn out to be the case, and we ended up paying surprise surcharges just so we could avoid eating indoors around unmasked guests. This has become a bigger challenge given the cool, rainy weather in this part of France lately, but it’s an area where we’re pretty inflexible so it requires a lot of creative thinking and picnic meals on our own. More on that in another post.

The crazy expensive breakfast did come with all these jams that I then brought back to our flat. I showed them!
Besides, it provided enough food that we were able to pack a picnic lunch (with a few snacks added).

Verdict? It was frustrating, it was problematic, and we had a blast! Fun, just fun. All of this is privilege, obviously, including the ability to judge and express frustration and be able to find alternatives (in some cases at an additional cost). Privilege. All of it. No whining allowed, only fun. So that’s what we did.

passing the time in a line
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Parisian summer, part 2

What is it like to be American tourists in France during a pandemic? Well, it’s not not scary, especially for people like me, and the decision wasn’t an easy one. Obviously the absolute safest, easiest choice would’ve been to stay home. We never approached this in terms of “now that the pandemic is finally over,” just like haven’t had any large gatherings yet and have always continued to mask up indoors. We were aware that we’d be taking chances in traveling so far from home, and we knew that to do so would entail embracing a lot of uncertainty as well as adjustments and inconveniences, with no guarantees that they would pay off, and that never stops feeling intimidating and humbling.

Between the time we entered the taxi outside our house in Washington DC, and the time we exited the taxi outside our building in Paris, we had been wearing our Niosh N95 masks for a total of 17 hours. Ouch.

While mask compliance at the DCA and Newark airports was iffy at times, it was a lot more consistent on the Newark-Paris flight. There were also frequent reminders from flight attendants for passengers to keep masks up at all times. Here in France, masks must be worn indoors at all times, as well as outdoors whenever there is crowding. Also, far more people continue to wear them outdoors compared to the US. The moment we enter a queue, even if we’re still outside, people routinely tend to pull on their masks without having to be told.

standard sign everywhere in the city

A few days before our departure, we learned of a new Health Pass that would go into effect in France on July 21st. It’s required for entering most visitor attractions, and starting in August, will be extended to restaurants. Proof of full vaccination for anyone 18 and over is usually enough to generate the Pass, and for anyone over 18 who’s unvaccinated, there has to be a negative Covid test within the past 48 hours. Plenty of places offer onsite testing with 15-minute results for this purpose.

David and I each obtained a Health Pass in the form of a QR code by showing our vaccination card and photo ID at a pharmacy; we are asked to show our QR code everywhere we go.

I know that both the Health Pass and mask mandates have generated protests here, but I for one feel reassured being here because of these measures. (PS. I never thought the CDC’s decision to lift mask mandates on an ‘honor system’ basis for vaccinated folks in the US was a good idea.) I still cringe, however, when I see the locals (who btw have gotten a lot younger since I was last here) sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at happy hour, even if it is outside!

There are hand sanitizers on restaurant tables and ^ by each bus stop.

Again, we know we’re taking risks, and we are taking plenty of precautions, too. One of them is no dining indoors at restaurants, a practice we’ve had since March 2020. Luckily, most places offer fantastic outdoor seating, with the added bonus of glorious people-watching. When we go to sit, we are deliberate in selecting tables near the outer edges of the dining space, and always have Eric sit in the farthest point from other people. Only David or I do the indoor shopping, including when we had to go to Ikea a few days ago, and only I went in. We’re also not traveling by train or public transit; only taxi or Uber or a car share, with lots of walking.

When we do need to spend a lot of time at indoor public spaces, we wear KN95 masks. Here we are about to enter the Louvre.

For longer trips outside the city, we plan on renting a car. The choice to drive instead of riding a train where we could relax and therefore travel farther is a good example of a compromise, because it limits how far we’re willing to travel outside Paris. But these trade-offs mean we actually get to do this now rather than wait another year, plus it feels good to be able to show respect and solidarity to this country that has welcomed us. And with that, may the adventures continue safely!

Oh, why did we have to go to Ikea? Story forthcoming :).

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Parisian summer, part 1

Although I’ve never lived in Paris, I have an interesting history of visits to this glorious city. My most recent time here was in 2009, and my son Eric had never been here, so it was about time for another trip! My family and I had very enthusiastically planned a spring break trip here … departing on March 19, 2020. We booked five nights at a hotel in the 7th Arrondissement, and were counting down the days, certain that the unfolding virus crisis would, at most, require us to take additional measures during our visit …

Paris in 1992; click on photo ^ for a story from that trip

Fast forward four scary, lonely, frustrating months. Some time last July, I said to David, “If the world has reopened enough by this time next year, why don’t we get out of the country for a whole month? You could work from there if needed, and we could really get to experience the town or city.” So instead of the original five days we’d planned on being in Paris last year, we are here for four weeks this year. I mean why not, right?

another Paris story, from 2004

I scoured the internet for apartment rentals, filtering my search to ones that permitted cancellation with a full refund up until July 2021. Other criteria included two bedrooms, a bit of local character, and washer & dryer. I wanted to be within a mile or less from the Seine. Also, we tried looking for a place with air conditioning: Lol, NO, at least not within our budget. (I also watched House Hunters International. Like, a lot.)

2009, click on photo ^ for story

In the end, I reserved a surprisingly (suspiciously?) affordable top-floor flat on a small side street in the 2nd Arrondissement, and we all spent the following twelve months alternating between bracing for disappointment and embracing timid optimism, while weighing our risk tolerance and commitment to safety constantly, too.

countdown to Paris, take deux (2021)

We followed the news, read multiple French government sites for guidelines, and double and triple checked that we had everything we needed to enter France responsibly during their restricted reopening, and still cautioned ourselves and each other against getting too excited. We gave ourselves plenty of time during our connection in Newark, and as soon as an airline employee arrived behind the counter at our gate, we went over and showed him our electronic boarding passes along with all the documents we’d prepared. Good thing, too, because he then gave us a printed boarding pass, on which he wrote OK, and this turned out to be required for boarding. Sure enough, plenty of passengers hadn’t completed this step, and during boarding, they were all sent back to the counter to obtain their OK’d printout. Now, you’ve heard of unruly air travelers being especially bad this year, right? Yep, well, we saw a few very angry folks not being their best selves in that moment, yelling at the boarding attendant because of this.

Nevertheless, we couldn’t believe how smooth everything had otherwise been so far for us. So when departure was delayed after we were already on the plane, we went “Yep, this is where they cancel the flight!” It literally wasn’t until takeoff that we believed fully that we were at long last, on our way to Paris. We still prepared for many hurdles upon arrival at Charles De Gaulle, but it turned out to be a piece of cake, or I should say gâteau.

taking off!
may we be well, and let the adventures begin …

We have now settled well into our home away from home, and are recovering from jetlag. Grateful hearts and beauty at every turn help a lot. I am sitting at this window beside our kitchen table as I write this. Grateful heart indeed.

inspiring view from our kitchen

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F (Is for) Phobias

They say glossophobia is the most common type of phobia there is. You’ve probably also heard that some people are even more scared of public speaking than of death.

Mercifully, glossophobia is not much of an issue for me. Frankly (again, mercifully), I’m not even much of a shy person. That doesn’t mean I don’t have crippling fears, though …

In the summer of 1999, I was 23 years old and was on a trip to Egypt (a Master’s graduation gift from my parents) with a group of fellow twenty- and thirty-somethings. I have a distinct memory of, on numerous occasions, entering a public restroom stall with my bottle of water in my hand. Did I put it on the floor of the stall?, under my armpit?, or did I leave it out on the sinks? Not sure, but I do know that as soon as I was done in the bathroom, I’d grab my bottle and keep drinking out of it without batting an eye.

God I would never do that now, haven’t since long before Covid, and I often reference that memory, and other similar ones like it, as a reminder of a time when I was … freer. Not to linger on how I got here, but I think my severe germophobia started with pregnancy and post-partum depression and anxiety. A lot of things people barely notice or may describe as merely stressful send me into debilitating panic.

Just a few examples.

One time years ago, a fellow parent at preschool told me their kid had been throwing up. My kid hung out with their kid all the time: I waited until they couldn’t see me, and cried the entire drive home. When I’m at a place with a water dispenser for refillable bottles, I always, always wipe the rim of my bottle–which never touches the water spout directly–before and after refilling it, and I recoil in horror and judgment when I see how carelessly other people put their bottle rims right up to the thing. For years I’ve wiped down airplane and train seats, tray tables, windows, and seatbelt buckles as a matter of routine, plus all surfaces in hotel rooms or vacation rentals. I am hyper aware of the sounds of coughing on a plane or train; when a person sneezes, I look to see if they used their hands to cover their mouth, and then track those hands like I’m Sherlock freaking Holmes (the one with Benedict Cumberbatch). At birthday parties, when the person slicing and dishing out the cake would lick their fingers in between slices, I would force myself to look away, and it would take a lot to still let my kid eat a slice of that damn cake.

Because you see, parenting with this sort of paranoia is its own incessant, multi-layered angst. It sucks. Part of me has defended the compulsion as being precisely born out of a desire to keep my kid safe and well, but I know, I know it isn’t normal, and the last thing I want to do is pass down to him the same limitations this has brought me. To use a visual that’s familiar these days, it’s a lot like living life from behind plexiglass, where it’s impossible to really hear and be heard, to touch things and experience them fully. You feel constantly separate, constantly self-conscious, and constantly exhausted from the effort of trying to hide it.

The whole time, I can hear the well-meaning teasing of friends and relatives, the smug micro aggressions of those who pride themselves on living life fearlessly (and some are so confident in their fearlessness that they’ve also been railing against masks and the Covid vaccine this entire year), the taunts coming from inside my own head, calling me weak and all kinds of other bad stuff.

Before the start of 2020, I’d spent years in therapy working on reality-checking my anxiety, exploring the reasons for it, forgiving myself, and overcoming it all just enough to function. And believe me, many times it has been just enough. Being functional has been a series of small achievements and victories. Baby steps. Family trips over the years have been bigger achievements, but they haven’t been without countless nights lying awake in the grips of fear, and lots of small negotiations with myself and with my beloved, loving family.

Enter Covid. How does a person with pre-existing germophobia react to all that’s happened this year? I’ll tell you in another post. For now though, just please be gentle, with yourself and with others. Also, maybe think twice before you lick your fingers while serving people food? Oh, and you know what else? Nobody, not one person, is completely free of fear. So F that.

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When white privilege isn’t white: Confessions of a complacent Latina

On Saturday, March 25, 1911, there was a fire at a garment factory in New York City. Within less than 30 minutes, the fire had claimed the lives of 146 mostly young immigrant women. I’ve been so moved by this tragedy since first hearing about it, felt so connected to the personal stories of these women, that it inspired me to write my first novel. So on Friday, March 24 of this year, I was taking an early morning bus from DC to New York to attend the commemorative events.

Shirtwaists carried in honor of the victims.

I arrived at Union Station an hour before my bus and headed straight for the restroom, which was occupied almost entirely by homeless women, doing what we all do when we first wake up in the morning. Brushing teeth, fixing hair, looking in the mirror; some were putting on makeup. Bags with their few possessions sat open on the floor nearby.

Now, I know homeless people “live” in bus and train stations, and it’s obvious on the most basic level that they’d use those restrooms. Still, it was jarring to me. I didn’t feel like being confronted with an uncomfortable reality before six o’clock in the morning. And I wasn’t just confronted with it, I was sharing the bathroom with it, competing with it for space in front of the mirror before I’d even had my morning coffee.

Crowd gathered outside the historic factory building at the Corner of Greene Street and Washington Place to honor the memory of the fire.

Facing uncomfortable realities is a ubiquitous part of life. But it’s somehow become a daily occurrence in the nightmare shit show that’s descended on our country since last November. It’s constant, inescapable.

And I must confess, with due self-awareness, that I’d spent the past few years of my life in a state of relative complacency. Sure I’m Hispanic and have at times encountered some real doozies in prejudiced stupidity … you’d be surprised if I told you the source of it sometimes. But as a Puerto Rican, I’ve been a US citizen since birth. I am very assimilated, and my hometown for the past 20 years has been Washington DC, a known “coastal elite bubble.” My son attends a bilingual school among many other children of diverse ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural, and gender-identity backgrounds.

I knew these past several years that things are far from perfect. I’d just been sufficiently untouched by bad stuff that I didn’t (need to) sweat it too much. For all my education, travels, so-called sophistication, for all my pursuit of diversity and my righteous outrage over systems that oppress the underprivileged, even as a woman of color, I’d embraced the safety of a life where my privilege was hardly ever questioned, much less threatened. I liked things that way, took them for granted.  I didn’t ignore the undercurrents of egregious inequality everywhere, but I did, for all practical purposes, choose to remain silent about them.

A lot of folks have articulated well how the recent election has awoken a bunch of us out of our complacency. That it’s a good thing this is happening. Like the beautiful essay We were made for these times, which inspired the quote that appears at the top of this post. It’s all so true. If we all waited for injustice to affect us directly before we spoke out for what’s right, the wrongs we humans inflict on one another would never be righted.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. … It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing … One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times.”

It’s just so easy to get bogged down, too. By outrage, powerlessness, uncertainty about what to do next. Every single day —EVERY. DAY.— I alternate between feeling grateful and determined to stay woke, and longing for the familiar comfort zone of the harbor I had known.

Back in the ladies’ room at Union Station, I noticed the homeless women were getting themselves ready to look just like any of the other travelers waiting to board a train or bus. I saw some again outside the restroom, and it worked well, they completely blended in. Had I not seen them in a more private moment, I’d never have known they were homeless.

In fact, I realized I’d seen one of them before, on a previous trip. My train was delayed, she was sitting next to me at the gate, and thinking she was a fellow traveler, I’d asked her if she was also waiting for the same train. She snapped and yelled that no she wasn’t, then grabbed her bag and stormed off. I remember feeling rather stung by her unkindness.

But you know, I’d just spent the morning doing the same exact thing as those women, dressing for a part. In my case, the part of an educated, moderately sophisticated urban wife and mother, an Americanized Puerto Rican who teaches Spanish, who reads, writes and travels. And please-god let me look the part of someone who’s written a story worthy of being read by more than 20 people. Most of the time though, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and I suffer from crippling impostor syndrome.

Every year, volunteers with street chalk visit the homes of the fire victims throughout the city, and write a commemorative message on the sidewalk. This was my first year participating. It was humbling, and an honor.

So, I could profess to feel a deep bond with women who perished in a fire over a hundred years ago, but bemoaned having to share a bathroom with homeless women on my way to honor the century-old tragedy? And this is what it boils down to. I’ve embraced, for decades, a sense of empathy in abstract, in theory, removed. Injustice hadn’t touched me in any real sense, so I could toot my own political correctness horn but remain generally silent about it. This is what we refer to when we talk about white privilege, or privilege in general, and why we need to keep talking about it. It’s something that I, even as a person of color, have been guilty of.

Something’s shifted, though, within me. It’s baby steps. One day at a time. But it’s true and irrevocable. Because our mutual destiny is inescapable and “tied in a single garment.” The homeless woman who yelled at me? I wasn’t exactly kind to her, either, on our second encounter. But she absolutely is my fellow traveler. So were the women in the restroom that morning. So are you. And remaining silent as though the plight of less fortunate sisters and brothers here and now isn’t mine and ours to bear is simply no longer an option. And so maybe I will look back on this time, and I will be grateful to my intolerant, unkind teachers after all.Share this:
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Never Forget

I met my husband David on this day, 14 years ago. The occasion was a progressive dinner party called (yes this party had a name) ‘Farewell to Jesse Helms.’ Jesse Helms was a senator from North Carolina who had recently retired, and who was known well for his opposition to affirmative action and to reproductive and gay rights, among other things. So one could say David and I met at an event celebrating the end of an era of bigotry. What a happy day that was!

November 9, 2002

November 9, 2002

A few years after David and I were married, when Obama was first elected president, I remember how, caught up in the wondrous surge of hope, I (half-kidding) exclaimed, “I think we can have a baby now!” And we did! Today that baby is in first grade. This morning he and his classmates were discussing what country they were going to flee to in light of this new upcoming presidency. Parents were hugging each other. Some of us cried together. The school principal sent an email to the parents, informing us that additional counseling services are available to the students in the next days and weeks. That in school today, teachers had to create activities that ensured and emphasized for the deeply distraught children that they are safe, and that they will always have access to education regardless of religion, race, or documentation status. In other words, they were in crisis mode, in fallout mode, because the children were so upset by the results of this election. Imagine that.

When we google the words Never Forget, we see they are basically synonymous with memorials in honor of the 9/11 tragedy. So many of us remember it as the most calamitous, most devastating day in our country’s entire history. And like many of you, I believe the results of this presidential election will likewise be remembered as one of the worst moments in our history. The disbelief is raw. As is the grief. We haven’t told our son about 9/11, just haven’t had the heart to. We’d figured, what’s the hurry? This morning, on the anniversary of the day we met, David and I held each other, utterly heartbroken, asking ourselves and each other, “How do we tell him?”

Never Forget can obviously be applied to many other human tragedies as well. Slavery. Segregation. Homophobia. Women literally dying, in shame, as a result of illegal abortions. Genocide. And I think one big reason why this election is so indescribably soul-crushing for me personally is that I feel like this happened because too many Americans fucking forgot, AGAIN, the consequences of electing an unstable, bigoted tyrant to office.

When you think about it, we all forget, all the time. We forget we’d resolved to be better. To eat better, to exercise more, to be more punctual, to read that book, to write that book, to yell less, to be kinder. Kinder to ourselves especially. And I believe this is what our country has done this week. There’s been a collective forgetting, a cataclysmic forgetting, that we’d resolved to be better. (Don’t think I don’t know there are some straight-up fucked up hate-filled bad seeds out there—I’m not talking about them or to them.)

hopeobama

Hope. Never forget the hope.

But Never Forget is also evocative for the patriotism it conjures so unequivocally and invariably. You see, I will never forget the power, the sheer force, of the auspices of hope and equality under which I met my husband 14 years ago tonight, and which partly inspired us to become parents 8 years ago. Now, more than ever before, I will remember to remember exactly what that felt like. And know that one day it will feel like that again. Because the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, even when it feels like the world’s turned upside down. After all, it does kind of feel like, after an agonizing decline in our cultural and national consciousness, we have “finally” hit bottom.

yorktown

Today I feel like the staggering “fallen foes” in this musical number from Hamilton, except I am most definitely not retreating.

So what do we tell our boy? Well, it’s a complicated conversation we’ll be having for years to come. For one thing, we are not going anywhere. We will grieve. We will go deeply within and broadly beyond ourselves, and ask some hard questions. We will love each other hard, and continue to revel in life’s joys and pleasures. We will work our asses off in peaceful yet assertive protest. And we will rise up, not in arms, but in love and peace.

David and I met while celebrating the end of era of bigotry. And I know that we shall one day, through our hard work, through invoking love and light, be celebrating the end of this unimaginable dark time in our history. This is a call to action. We will not be silenced. We will not give in to fear. As Michelle Obama said in her speech at the Democratic Convention earlier this year, let’s get to work. P E A C E.Share this:
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Of course I’m with her

Yeah, in case it wasn’t already obvious. But I’m not going to make my musings here all dense and high-brow. Goodness knows we all have policy and issues fatigue. Here are some simple basic things that describe one person who’s voting for Hillary Clinton. I hope you’ll find them worthwhile or at least amusing.

I’m with her not just as a Latina. Also and more specifically, as a Puerto Rican (and lifelong US citizen) who’s spent half her life on the Island and the other half on the mainland. As a woman and feminist, a daughter and sister, an aunt. As a deeply flawed but fiercely loving wife and mother in a multi-ethnic household.

I am voting for Hillary as a Catholic (yeah you heard me) and a woman who believes in God and evolution and prayer and reincarnation and faith and energy fields. As someone who, in fact, prays every damn day. Who believes in democracy and never takes something so precarious for granted. As someone who wants peace. Who supports gun control and who still cries every time she remembers Sandy Hook (crying now). Who believes that what’s good in humanity (and in America) is greater than what’s not so good, and who refuses to ever, ever give in to cynicism.

annelamottehope

I’m with her, as someone who loves this country. Who is passionate about human rights and civil rights (is there any difference?). As a Generation Xer who likes to think she’s acquired some measure of wisdom in her 41 years on this earth. Which reminds me, also as someone who does not believe global warming is a hoax. And as an unapologetic tree-hugging bacon-eating pescetarian. As someone who’s on the fence about pets but might still get one out of love for her kid.

I’m with her as someone who, in addition to family and country, also loves history, coffee, saying ‘I love you,’ books, potato chips, traveling, Judy Bloom, sushi, Harry Potter, chocolate, Stephen King, cooking and baking, yoga, naps, swearing, exercise, friends, raw onions, Hamilton (and musical theater in general), Christmas, Paris, red shoes, tea, pasta, writing, NYC, Hondas, cuddles, and cheese.

I am voting for Hillary as a fervent LGBT ally and supporter for life. As a neighbor. As a linguist with a freaking doctorate. A once and future educator. An author. A hypnotist. As someone who strives not to take herself too seriously. As a citizen with common mother-trucking sense. As someone who reads and who’s been paying attention.

I’m with her as an individual whose pet peeves include tardiness, meanness, having to remember so many damn passwords all the time, poor spelling, self-righteousness, sloppy food preparation in restaurants (apple core in my pie? really?), toilet paper placed with the flap under instead of over, superiority and condescension, plastic packages designed to be impossible to open; and the incessant need to update the software and apps on my phone to the point that nothing works like I remember and I have to relearn how to use Viber, Facebook, and the message threads on my Gmail all the damn time.

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These are just some things about me. And like all of you, I am greater than the sum of my parts. Not easily labeled or pegged. Thank goodness for that. The two nominees are also greater than the sum of their parts. There’s a part or two about Hillary that I’m not crazy about. But the sum of what she stands for resonates with me, with my values, with my vision for the future of this country.

I can’t think of a single thing the loathsome Trump has said that would ever, ever, EVER make me vote for him. Not one that I could isolate. Which makes me think that voting for him on one single issue (abortion –like Trump stands for the sanctity of life? please) is reckless, irresponsible, and deeply troubling. (To the person I know who says she’ll unfriend anyone who “attacks” her “faith”-based support of Trump, the ball’s in your court, my dear. Perhaps you should unfriend me. Go in love and light.) And the sum of what I’ve seen and heard from this awful, awful man makes me feel like I’m in a nightmare I want to wake up from.

I am not flippant about what’s at stake here. I also know that calling this the most important election of our lifetime is tired and trite. But of all the values we hold dear as a country, I believe that democracy is one of the greatest, and also one of the most frighteningly under siege right now. There are many, many reasons why I’m voting for Hillary. I tried to be both humorous and serious here, but don’t be fooled by my (attempt at) lightheartedness. This isn’t funny. There is one nominee who, in unprecedented fashion, has seen fit to shit all over the strides we’ve made in our –admittedly flawed– democratic process (not to mention all over equality, integrity, and basic human decency). And if nothing else, I am voting for the one one who respects and vows to uphold democracy.Share this:
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Live every day like it’s your birthday

Everyone has a favorite version of the old adage: “Live every every moment (or every day) like it’s your last.” I get it, I do. Life is precious and fragile, and if we knew we were dying (which when you really think about it, we all basically are), what would our souls yearn to do with such urgency that we’d once and for all let go of the meaningless stuff that weighs us down? I absolutely get this, particularly when it comes to loving, and letting our beloveds know they are cherished. (I sit here writing this on the 15th anniversary of 9/11.)

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I also find the idea of death as a motivator kind of dark though. Some of us take urgency a little too seriously, and this sort of message makes us susceptible to feelings of anxiety and defeat. Because if it’s all about, “quick, you’re running out of time, go go go!” well shit, I just can’t take that kind of pressure.

This is how I felt on my forty-first birthday last week. For me it was a little harder than forty, actually. Forty felt special, a big milestone birthday. I used it to look at life on a grand scale, to ask big questions. In hindsight, that wasn’t such a great idea. So I didn’t ask big “life” questions this time. Instead, I decided to focus on how I would behave, what I would do differently, to mark this one birthday day as peacefully as possible.

1. The first thing I did in the morning, more consciously than usual, was to give thanks for being alive. Because it’s true that life is precious and fragile. I know how fortunate I’ve been, and I happen to like it here quite a lot. And each new day really is a gift.

2. As someone who doesn’t like being the center of attention and struggles with feelings of unworthiness, birthdays feel a little awkward. So in the morning, I also made a conscious decision to remain open to the love I’d receive during the day. To not try to minimize it with the tired deflective “oh I don’t deserve it!” reflex. But to receive it fully, because who am I to stop the flow of love, all because of some stupid (untrue) script stuck in my head since childhood? I read somewhere recently that any love we deny ourselves is love we deny the world. The older I get, the truer this feels.

So I let my husband David and our son Eric, and my parents, spoil me. And it was freaking awesome.

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Sweet surprises I got to wake up to.

3. I also tried to stay centered on what matters, again, not big-picture thinking, but in the small things that arose throughout the day. Eric got into a bit of trouble at school that day. Sometimes I get kind of fixated on these things. You know, like I can control them? I thought about it and asked a little bit about it. Then I was happy, very happy, to just let it go.

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A bouquet of my favorite flowers.

4. I deliberately commented with a thank-you message to each and every Facebook friend who wished me a happy birthday. Since I’m not super popular, it wasn’t a huge number of people, but it felt deeply special. And with responding to each of them, I remember each of them still, with enormous gratitude. I’d invite you to consciously write ‘thank you’ a few dozen times one day and see how you feel!

And finally, 5. This one’s connected to 2 because it’s all about love. In this case, self-love and truth-telling, and discerning when something is, and is not, about me. A loved one called and I missed their call. I was briefly tempted to worry this had made them mad, then I … didn’t. We spoke later, no one was mad, and that was the end of it.

Another loved one whom I’d have liked to hear from on the phone sent me only a text message. <Shrug.> I was disappointed; then I accepted it, very importantly, without reading into it any messages about me.

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Here comes the ice cream cake!

My family and I tried watching a movie we’d recently loaned to a friend, and the DVD was so badly damaged that half the movie was simply unwatchable. I reached out to the friend, part of me fearing she’d be insulted at the insinuation that she’d ruined our DVD. She didn’t recall anything happening to our movie while it was in her possession, which I wholly believe, but she still insisted on taking responsibility for it, and replaced it with a new one. I’ve always highly respected this friend; now I respect her even more. Obviously I needn’t have worried. And to think I almost didn’t ask!

Focusing on what matters. Gratitude. Knowing when something is about me and the enormous, glorious freedom that so much actually isn’t. LOVE. I had a perfect birthday. Not because every single circumstance of the day was perfect  –though it was pretty darn nice–  but because I remained conscious about how I responded to everything that arose.

Again, I didn’t set out to ask big life questions at my birthday this year. But in asking how I wanted to spend the one day, I actually stumbled on some practices that could serve me pretty well every day. And since we’ve established that I’m not a fan of undertaking each moment like I’m about to kick the proverbial bucket, I figure that using lessons from a day spent celebrating life is a good approach for me. I probably shouldn’t eat every day like I ate on my birthday though…

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Churros con chocolate happy dance.

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Back to School

My son Eric started first grade last week. You’ve all seen the funny memes, gifs, and videos of parents doing a gleeful happy dance when school resumes at the end of summer. For some reason though, I really don’t feel that way. So I thought I’d break it down a little to understand why.

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First  –and I know I’m speaking as an at-home parent–  I like going at least a few weeks with absolutely nothing structured to do. I loved lazy summers as a kid, loved them as an adult before parenthood, and love them still as a parent. We get to sleep in and take a long time eating breakfast, no lunchbox needs packing, no running out the door, we travel, go out for the day or stay home … we just get to hang out. (And yes, there’s also a lot more TV. So what? It’s summer!) Why would I be in a hurry to be in a hurry every morning again? For the most part, I’m really, really not.

There’s also the part where I miss him and feel nostalgic, plain and simple. I’m sure it’s not unique of me to feel occasionally sentimental about the passage of time. You’ve heard it before: It goes so fast. And the feeling tends to hit me the hardest at the start of a new school year. When we turn a year older or mark the beginning of a new calendar year, we do celebrate, but then we go back to our relatively unchanged routines. A lot more changes with each new school year.

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Kindergarten graduation in June.

For instance, Eric graduated kindergarten in June. But it’s not until I see the new crop of kindergartners and their parents at school now that it really sinks in. There are new teachers and new classmates. He has a locker now instead of a cubby. He’s literally moved up one floor in the school building. He knows he’s one of the bigger kids now and very proudly displays a lot more independence in many different areas.

So between laziness and nostalgia, I love summer and feel less than thrilled about back to school.

And yet …

If researchers were to conduct studies on when even the most well-meaning parents are most likely to lose their patience with their kids and, shall we say, speak to them in a slightly raised tone of voice, I suspect they’d find a correlation between this phenomenon and summer, particularly its final weeks. I think both kids and parents get stressed knowing school’s about to start. No matter how much we love our school, there’s anxiety over change and the unknown.

Obviously, it’s all the togetherness, too. Let’s face it, Eric’s used to not being with his parents 24/7. And that’s a good thing. An important thing. My kid honestly doesn’t want me around all the time, and by the end of a few weeks of that, he’s probably ready to spend several hours a day where I don’t see or mediate most of his actions.

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Hugging it out in Venice, Italy this summer.

From my end, the more we’re together at home in the context of a daily routine, the greater the danger of me believing the terrible delusion that I can control all the influences my kid is exposed to, and that in the degree to which I control that, I can rest assured that he’ll mirror back and validate me and my values. I think plenty of parents, stay-at-home moms especially, are vulnerable to this. In the first week of school alone, Eric has come home saying some things that make me want to ask him where he heard it, who said it and in what context, what he said in response, and what he thinks about it all. In other words I’d thoroughly dissect everything with him. Then I’d tell myself it’s so that he has a chance to discuss and process it. But I’d bet that a good eight times out of ten, I’m doing it just so that whatever he’s exposed to goes through the filter of Mom, and I once again have the illusion of control.

So with everything Eric says that comes from school, I try to stay aware, and check myself first. If it’s something that could compromise his safety or ethics, I pursue it. If it just threatens me and my delusions of control over my kid, I rein it in. His knowing I’m not a needy hovering parent is at least as important as knowing I’m there whenever he needs me.

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More summer fun!

So, do I celebrate back to school? Yes and no, I guess.

Parenting someone so young and sweet is so much more precious that I ever imagined. And the separation we experience every year at back to school, more so than at birthdays or New Year’s, reminds me all too keenly of how crazy fast these years are moving. My heart aches a little. The tug is real.

But there’s something to be said for making it through another school year and summer together. It’s not a flippant reveling in having him “out of my hair” again though. Yes, there’s relief that the end-of-summer jitters have passed and the year has started out well. Yes, I do better when I have some time to myself for a few hours five days a week, and he does better when a portion of his time and interactions with people and with information aren’t controlled by his mom. Most importantly though, my boy is slowly yet assertively making his own way in the world. I honor that. That, I celebrate.

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