Words to live by

It's late Saturday night and I'm staying overnight at my sister's house, following her son's (my nephew's) graduation party. My nephew also just graduated from high school. He and my son are three days apart in age.

It's 11:30 and I'd be asleep now, except that the room where I usually sleep when I'm here is very hot. The ceiling fan is insanely loud and the windows lack screens. I'd rather be too hot than wake up in the middle of the night to find bats swarming around my head.

*****

No bats last night. It's Sunday night now and I'm back in my own bed under my very quiet ceiling fan. I have a busy few weeks ahead and a few projects that I need to work out in my mind. The heat isn't the only thing that kept me awake last night. I keep writing things down and trying to organize my days and my thoughts, but I fear that things are getting away from me.

The biotech company where I used to work had a GLP (Good Lab Practices) laboratory, and they had a saying: “If it isn’t documented, then it didn’t happen.” It’s a good saying, and I have adapted it slightly or my own use: “If it isn’t documented, then it won’t happen.” I’m going to make a few lists, and take a few notes (and of course, I’m going to write about making the lists and taking the notes) and then maybe I’ll feel a little more in control.

*****

It’s Tuesday and I don’t feel any more under control than I did yesterday; and strangely, I do not care. This will not last. I’ll be in my normal low-grade panic state any day now, but I’ll enjoy the feeling of being a person who doesn’t care for as long as that feeling lasts.

On my way to Philadelphia on Saturday, I passed a country homestead on U.S. Route 1, just north of Belair, Maryland. The front yard had a flagpole, and the flagpole was flying a flag, and the flag read “Trump 2020: No more bullshit.”

I don't support the pre-colon part of that sentiment, of course, but I’m all for the post-colon part. “No more bullshit” is a credo that I can get behind. Between “No more bullshit” and “If it’s not documented, then it won’t happen,” I have now not one but two solid life philosophies.

*****
So now it's Wednesday and I am multi-tasking. I had a meeting at HHS headquarters today, and I'm on the Red Line on my way back to Twinbrook. It's hot and humid and sunny, an ideal Washington DC summer morning. My meeting was short and productive and after it was over, I needed a soda to fortify me for the one-mile walk back to Union Station. Federal Center is closer but I hate changing trains. If it's not on the Red Line, then it's dead to me.

And that's another excellent life philosophy.

I take pictures of the Capitol whenever I walk past it. 

I stopped at a street vendor, because I wanted a soda in a can, and because a DC street vendor on a summer day is one of my favorite things. I found a diet soda in the cooler and I ordered a giant soft pretzel. The Korean vendor smiled at me. "Five hundred dollars," he said, hand outstretched.

I handed him a ten. "Can I owe you the rest?"

He nodded. "I send you a bill."

"Thank you," I said. "The check is in the mail."

"Ha ha! Good one!"

I ate the entire pretzel, making the walk to Union Station a necessity.

*****

I found these giant rock sculptures on my way back to my office from Twinbrook Metro.

"Hereafter" is kind of poetic. "Starsailor" is just silly.
 But "Field Rush" might be my favorite.

I have no idea what they mean, but that is part of their appeal. They might be someone else's guiding signposts. For my part, I will stick with "No more bullshit," "If it's not documented, then it didn't (or won't) happen," and "If it's not on the Red Line, then it's dead to me."

Oh, and the most important of all: "The check is in the mail."

Redeeming quality

On Monday, I was on LinkedIn, where a person who identifies himself as an author posted video of a stranger picking his nose on a subway train. I can think of no motive for doing something like this other than just shitty low-down meanness, but the so-called "author" claims that he wanted only to remind his fellow LinkedIn-ers that managing one's "brand" is a 24/7/365 endeavor, and that one can never be too careful in public, because someone is always watching, including jerks with cameras.

Let's set aside the remote possibility that this man wants to be known for his disgusting personal habits, and that public nose excavation would then be an integral aspect of his brand. Is there no other way to make your stupid and shallow little if-it-isn't-marketed-then-it-doesn't-exist point than to humiliate and degrade a person on the Internet? And it gets worse, because the post got a ton of attention. And according to my unscientific data analysis, reaction ran about 20% disgusted by the original poster's meanness and cruelty, and about 75% either neutral or amused. The remaining 5% of commenters actually took the poster at his word, and accepted his claim that the video was a public service announcement, meant only to illustrate the importance of brand management. Of course those people are stupid, and there's nothing you can do about stupid people.

*****

I won't pretend that I don't like social media. I do. I like staying in touch with family and friends whom I don't get to see often. I like posting pictures and writing funny captions and hashtags. (My hashtags are hilarious.) I like commenting and sharing and chatting.

But people are meant to be together, physically together. We're meant to see each other's faces and hear each other's voices. We're meant to connect, and not just electronically.

The loss of face-to-face interaction between people who are perfectly capable of meeting in person but who choose to engage with devices instead is a big problem, but it's not the only problem with Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and all of the rest of it. It's not even the biggest problem. Because of its remote and (sometimes) anonymous nature, social media has completely moved the line that people aren't supposed to cross. And the result is that in a pretty robust online debate on whether or not a person should have posted video of a stranger picking his nose, not one participant in that debate--not even among the right-thinking 20%--questioned the morality of secretly photographing a stranger in the first place.

*****

On Wednesday night, I checked in on Facebook. A neighborhood friend, who is confined to a wheelchair, posted a "feeling sad" status, and within moments a dozen people had posted "thinking of you" and "what can I do to help?" messages. Maybe it would have been better if we'd all rushed to her side. Her house is around the corner. But without Facebook, we probably wouldn't have known that she was sad and needed her friends.

Facebook has a lot of problems, but a thing that allows a lonely, disabled person to reach out and find immediate reassurance that there are people who love her and care about her can't be all bad. I saw my friend on Thursday night, and she was better. And that's what I'm sticking with. For every jackass who uses social media to bully and shame a harmless (gross, but harmless) stranger, there are ten good-hearted people who use it to cheer and comfort a person who's lonely or sick or sad. Social media is just like the people who created it. We suck sometimes, but we have our moments.

Boys and men

I'm waiting for my mother and my aunt right now. I forget sometimes how long it takes those ladies to get ready to leave the house for any reason, any reason at all. The upside is that I thought I wouldn't have time to write today, but here I am. I could crank out a whole essay in the time it takes them to get ready to go out for dinner, with time left over to copy edit. And that's how meta it gets around here. I can write about writing, and I can write about not having time to write, EVEN AS I AM WRITING. Meta.

*****

My mother and aunt live in Philadelphia. They came on Wednesday night, for my son's high school graduation, which happened on Thursday morning, at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington DC. 329 kids were high school seniors on Thursday morning, and now they're high school graduates.

I graduated from high school at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, a venue not unlike Constitution Hall. Our school was the only school in the city privileged to graduate there. Constitution Hall, on the other hand, is normally a serious concert venue, but it turns into a veritable graduation factory in June. The next class and their families were already streaming in as we edged our way out, barely moving on the jam-packed narrow sidewalk on D Street. Happy graduates and little children and parents and friends and elderly relatives with wheelchairs and canes in a claustrophobic crush of lunch-seeking people, and then finally the crowds thinned as we walked toward the parking garage on G Street. I needed a sweater, even in a dense crowd on a June morning in Washington DC.

This weather. What the hell?

*****
The graduation ceremony was lovely; just over two hours long, with funny remarks from the senior class president and a very moving farewell speech from the principal. I haven't been our principal's biggest fan. She's fine, I don't dislike her or anything. But she has always seemed to me the exemplar of a type that I call Administrator-Princesses. And I call them that because I'm a jerk and a smart-ass, and I have no idea what I'm talking about.

As you'd expect, she called out several of the graduates for outstanding achievements of one kind or another (including one of my son's swim teammates, who will study and swim at the U.S. Naval Academy). But she also gave heartfelt praise to several kids who struggled or made mistakes, but recovered and persevered and graduated by the skin of their teeth. Several kids had to work throughout the extended senior vacation to complete assignments or make up tests. One boy dropped out and then returned to finish, a year late. And one boy, as the principal put it, "took a very wrong turn" in his sophomore year, and made some very serious mistakes. With obvious emotion, she said that the day he came back and said that he wanted to turn his life around and finish high school "was one of the happiest days in my career as an educator," surpassed only by this day, when she got to see him walk down an aisle in a cap and gown. In every example, she made every listener feel the importance and the value of every single young person, some weighed down with medals and honor cords and stoles, and some with cap and gown and no accessories other than their beautiful smiles. 

Not a dry eye, I tell you. And so don't listen to me when I dismiss people with my snide little names and funny funny categories. I'm a jerk; and most of the time, I don't know what I'm talking about.

*****
The next day, my eighth grader graduated from middle school, and so we did the whole thing again, on a slightly smaller scale. He received a President's Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement, signed by Donald J. Trump and Betsy DeVos. Well, the certificate with its shiny seal is nice. 

Anyway, the eighth grade class adviser gave a funny speech about how the kids entered middle school as sixth graders, making play cakes with EZ Bake Ovens, and then advanced to baking actual edible cakes with store-bought mix, and then developed advanced baking skills, crafting homemade cakes from real ingredients. It was a good metaphor.

It might have been better had he avoided the phrase "master bakers" in a room full of eighth graders.

Know your audience, is all.

*****

So that which I have both dreaded and looked forward to is over. Graduations, Confirmation, last concerts, last games, last high school swim meets--all over for now. One more child will enter high school in the fall, and we'll do the whole thing over again. For now, we'll have our usual summer of summer swim meets and Friday night pasta parties. The long years of school and the short weeks of summer and the games and concerts and birthdays and college applications all go by very fast.

*****
It's Monday now, the first day of what we call "real summer" around here, because school is well and truly out, and spring sports are finished, and the pool is open from noon to 9 everyday. And the weather is finally hot, or at least warm. My son will turn 18 tomorrow, and he received his Selective Service registration card today. No time wasted, and no time to think about the implications of that little paper card with his name and address and date of birth. For now, we're all safe at home in the summer. But just like high school, nothing lasts forever.

Checklists and appointments

Donald Trump did something this weekend, I'm sure, but I have no idea what it was. I don't know what he said, or what he did, or what he tweeted, and I feel that I'm a better person for this lack of knowledge.

I decided not long ago that I'd avoid all news--especially political news--on the weekends. This weekend, I officiated at a swim meet, and went to a neighborhood kid's graduation party, and swam in a freezing cold pool, and cooked and ate and read and wrote, and didn't give a thought to the swamp on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few miles from my house.

*****
Now it's Monday, and it's June 10, I'm all caught up on news, and it's too cold to swim. But it's all right. My son graduates from high school on Thursday, and my younger son graduates from middle school on Friday, and people graduating means that summer has to return at some point.

*****
Oh, and I got a haircut, and it's a good haircut. It's maybe the best haircut I've ever had. Most people didn't even notice it, because it's not very different from my usual hairstyle, only it's cut really well.

I approached this haircut with considerable trepidation. My history vis-a-vis haircuts isn't good. But I was hating my hair and desperate to fix it so it would fall properly without fifteen minutes of struggle with a hairdryer and brush. Ain't nobody got time for that nonsense.

Half an hour after I walked into the new salon, I had hair that was half an inch shorter, but a hundred times better. The stylist, an older Iranian lady, gently suggested that I might consider some kind of color to camouflage the encroaching gray. She looked me up and down. "You're a very beautiful lady. Hair, skin, clothes, style, everything perfect," she said, with an up and down sweeping gesture. "Just a little bit of color, that's all."

I don't get "very beautiful" and "everything perfect" very often. This is how good this haircut is: I actually believed her.

*****
Well what the hell was that? Is this Glamour magazine? I mean, really.

It's Tuesday now, and it's still too cold to swim, and my hair is still pretty good, but don't worry--I won't be writing a sonnet about it or anything.

*****
The last few months have been just one long checklist, and I'm almost at the end.

Confirmation? Check.
Last middle school and high school band concerts? Check.
Last high school swim meet? Last middle school softball game? Check and check.
Awards nights? Potluck dinners? Prom? Graduation rehearsal? Check times four.

Graduation on Thursday, and middle school graduation on Friday. And then that's all there is. There isn't any more. It's a little sad. But at least my hair is OK.

Vocabulary

Context is everything, especially where weather is concerned. If I had time to go swimming, I'd hate the weather right now. It's cool and overcast and a little breezy with a distant threat of rain. But since I'm sitting outside at a baseball game, the weather is perfect. Context.

It's the end of the school year, second in chaos only to the holidays to suburban parents of sports- and music-playing high school and middle school kids. There's a lot going on. There are overlaps and conflicts. There's a lot of takeout food. But it's all over in a week, and the clouds are warmed by a tiny bit of golden light and the air is fragrant and soft. Dinner will be souvlaki from our favorite Greek takeout place.

*****

"Worrying about your children is sanity." (Adam Sandler's whatever-his-name-is character in "Spanglish")

Wisdom can come from anywhere, even bad movies. At least I hope that this is wisdom. If it is, then I am certifiably sane.

I have two children. Two teenage sons. And so I worry. Worry, of course, is nature to me. Not second nature, just nature. But teenage sons are worrisome, no matter your disposition. My two are very different and so I worry about them in different ways, for different reasons. And at different times. I alternate my worry schedules.

So that's a good thing. Because I seldom have to worry about both of them at once. I'm not sure if they work together on this or not; but generally, when one of them has a problem, the other one is OK. And luckily for me, they're both usually OK. But I still worry, because that's my nature, and because I'm their mother. Sanity.

*****
Having children who are teenagers, one about to graduate from high school and one about to enter high school, is an exercise in contemporaneous nostalgia. Look that up, because I might have just invented it. Everything I do, and everything my children do, reminds me of something that they did or that we did together, a year ago or ten years ago. And in June, everything--the breeze off the pool deck and the sunlight on the water and the very air--everything reminds me of their ever-so-quickly-vanishing childhoods. This summer is just barely getting started, and it's happening right now, and I miss it already. Contemporaneous nostalgia.