All There Is To It

Tip of the Hat to Progress, And I'm Still Fueled by the Past

From the Department of Mundane Profundities:
Today, President Obama extended the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Act and also removed the ban on travel and immigration by people with HIV.

This isn't very exciting news and, fortunately, it's completely non-applicable to most people's lives. The reason I notice this news is because my life was strongly impacted by Ryan White and his mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, by way of the funding that the Act made available to States for meeting the needs of the under-served.

Back in the day, everyone with HIV was under-served.

I used to run in a different world from the one I'm in today. It's all around us, yet many don't know it's there. Many suspect this alternate realm's presence, and they take steps to avoid confirming their suspicions. When I and my colleagues were turned loose on the streets in 1991 with the mission of permeating that other world and rendering help when possible, our salaries, reimbursements, and resources were paid for by the Ryan White Act.

The highly publicized travails of Ryan and his mom probably did more for educating the average person about HIV than any impassioned team of educators and social workers.

Still, stigma has lingered in the form of institutionalized standards. Most of us don't even know that all this time, our country has functioned under legislation that passively and ignorantly treats people with this virus like pariah.

More than 20 years ago, when much was still unknown about HIV/AIDS, the U.S. instituted a ban on travelers with HIV from entering the country. No more of that silliness after January 1, 2010.

I run in tidier communities now, where much attention is paid to controlling ambiance, if not experience. My days no longer revolve around maintaining alert vigilance and trying to be unseen, continually scheming to assure clients' anonymity, searching for words to boost the morale of the ill while saying goodbye to the dying. But I will forever feel compelled to continue opening eyes to that other world.

Listen to President Obama talk about Ryan, his mom, our country's previously backward stance on addressing a deadly virus, and our final move forward toward demonstrating our beliefs with action.

Read more about Ryan's incredible story on the US Dept of Health & Human Services site.

Crumbling Toward Twitter Oblivion

Maybe it's me. My age? My innate and recurring mode of disorganization? My laissez faire attitude (and yes, Typepad, I spelled that correctly!)? My hormone fluctuations?

I can't keep up with the whole Facebooking-Twittering-Whatever-Else-Kinda-Communication-Is-Next-On-The-Horizon'ing. And damn, I'm trying hard.

Okay, enough whining. (but I'm so good at it...) I'm going to start assuming that all those Blogorific Mommies who are Out There & In Touch 24/7 have all the same support systems as me, no more, no less. There comes a time when a woman's got to stop waiting for things to be 'just such and though' and just start.

Here's the deal: I'm going to be adding to my time burden -- I mean -- starting a new Internet adventure in the next few weeks. That's why you may have noticed a new widget in my blog's right-hand pile o'stuff. A recipe contest, it is, and one that's dependent on the 140 characters allowed by Twitter. 

If you want to see my related recipe tweet, well... you'll just have to look for me on Twitter, now won't you? (And the contest hashtag is #frenchs)

I have succumbed, to what, I'm not entirely sure. But... Go!

Santa Is Dead. Viva Reality.

Not long ago, I tweeted about the inevitable question from my 10 year old: "Mom, are you and Dad really Santa Claus?"

My first response: "Have you talked to your father?"

The Boy: "No," as he headed for the telephone.

My expert deflective maneuvering skills were good enough to put the conversation in dad's court only until he punted back to me.

"What do you want for dinner?" I hurriedly asked my son while rushing to the kitchen.

Fast forward a few weeks to one of our many mundane car trips to class. "I know that Santa is just you and Dad."

"How do you know?"

"Because I talked to Dad and I recognized his handwriting one time."

Sigh. After confirming by phone with his father that, indeed, they'd had "The Talk" and my son wasn't just trying to pull a good one on his rattle-brained old lady, I flashed him a crooked smile.

"Yeah. That was us."

"I knew it."

"So, what do you think about that? Does it make you sad?"

"Me? No! I mean, c'mon... A fat man in a red suit comes down the chimney and eats your cookies?! The guy should've been sued by now!"

For a bit there, amid our raucous laughter, The Boy felt victorious over The Old People. I felt relieved at how letting go of this part of his childhood was easier than I anticipated. I told him about how playing Santa was one of the most exhilarating tasks of parenthood for me: buying and hiding googahs that only Santa would bring, stumbling around in the late night Christmas Eve dark, trying to keep quiet while assembling complicated playscapes, sometimes dragging myself back out of bed before dawn to make sure I'd taken a few bites of those apparently-valuable cookies...

My Almost-Teenager agreed that he would, as his father had earlier made him sworn to do, vigilantly keep the secret held among Former Believers.

Then I introduced the new version of Christmas sans Santa: fewer gifts, fewer surprises, hand-in-hand with a new appreciation for the phrase "No, we can't afford that right now..."

But oh, my clever boy... "I know. I can give you guys a list of the things I want and then you pick some and don't tell me which ones. I can still be surprised!"

This is my absolute favorite age, hands-down.

It's Only Hate, After All

Sitting at a light in my 2003 Chevy Malibu (bought used in 2007 and now dinged up by encounters with an 18-wheeler and a bike-riding 10 year old) with a faded Obama/Biden sticker on the bumper and windows rolled down to enjoy the rare September cool...

From the car next to me I hear, "F**K OBAMA!!" and turn my head just in time to see the darkened window roll up.

That same 10 year old (who a few weeks ago unwittingly carved a neat straight line into my outer door with his bike handle) glances over from the passenger seat to see nothing more than I did, and he sits back again, content to continue jamming to the CD of music that his mother, father, and friends will be singing in church in about a week.

"Everything is holy now," sings Peter Mayer.

Since both lights are still red, we remain -- the hater to my left, the groovy pre-teen to my right, and me, the gray-haired buddhist-UU-Christian hippie queer in the middle.

The three of us sat there, suspended in whatever each of us wanted to hover within, for a good three minutes more.

I tweeted the encounter, my most recent obsession.

It's not as creepy, this car-to-car spewing of hate, as the time I was similarly accosted in the grocery store parking lot. True or not, having a bulk of metal surrounding me adds to a sense of safety.

I wished the Hater peace, in my head and via Twitter.

If it's not for who I visibly support in politics, there are plenty of other things for which I am likely to be hated. Everywhere.

If the Hater's like me and most other humans, the soundwaves of what he yelled out his car window continued to bounce around inside his skull for another minute or so, maybe longer. That's enough karma for me.

Life May Just Be One Big Wave of Chocolate Mousse

Not that I would ever make chocolate mousse, but I'm sure Julia Child was the Mistress of such. This post isn't really about Julia Child. Being who I am and raised where I was, I never got into Julia's particular brand of the art of cooking. My friend, Pam Madsen, though, just connected some dots on her blog, The Fertility Advocate, in that way she does -- bringing together seemingly disparate ideas and people and events, alluding to the ever-reconfiguring human web.

Seems Pamela is a big Julia Child fan, so she was eager to see the newly released "Julie & Julia". The draw for Pam isn't so much the cooking part, or even specifically the great chef's infertility. It's the fact that Child was a whole package, and the movie presented her thus.

Famous people, celebrities, are almost inherently one-dimensional to us. The lurid tabloid details titillate us, though the balancing affect of a story's 'other side' is sometimes, frankly, boring. But to our bigger brains, the complexity of human nature and the unfolding events that seem to swirl around us make far more interesting stories than any single aspect, no matter how outstanding that one grain of persona seems at first glance.

Pam and I both share a fascination with the "bags of soup" (thanks, Jason, for that label) that we call 'people'. There's so much going on there, inside our visible shells. It's not that any of us always likes each ingredient, but the end result, the final dish, is the treasure.

Here's to dotted lines, between longing and contentment, and all the intriguing spaces between the dots...

Better Late Than Never: Out of the Frying Pan

I’m going to cut to chase here. It’s been about two years since I received a copy of Gillian Clark’s Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef’s Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal.

Being another single mama, I’m hoping Gillian understands the delay. But I’m not holding my breath.

Gillian Clark is a savvy, ambitious business-minded woman, so she might be a tad miffed at how long it finally took me to write down my thoughts (which she hopefully won’t think are now mulled to the point of fermentation.)

Ms. Clark doesn’t let life get in her way (like I do…) She is a matter-of-fact character who doesn’t indulge in self-pity. With those traits, she’s created her own little food empire in the Washington, D.C. area, first with Colorado Kitchen, and recently with The General Store.

Gillian Clark’s food, though, is all about the warmth of family. Her recipes, laced through the tale that begins with her failing marriage, are simply real (and pretty simple, too, thankfully.)

So far, our house has tried Gillian’s “Best Mashed Potatoes Anywhere,” “Braised Cube Steak,” and her signature “Carrot Sage Soup,” which is also mentioned in this blog by Washington Post’s Kim O’Donnel. All three recipes are good reasons for Clark’s success in the competitive D.C. restaurant market, and there are far more dishes we’ll be trying from the book.

Reading Gillian’s memoir at night brought me back to a time when I wrote letters, in long-hand on lined paper, back and forth with a good friend in another city. The Lone Mom in me connected with the author’s fear and dread, the what-if’s, the exhaustion, the whittling down of priorities to a fine point to match the available resources. Even on nights when I could barely keep my lids open, Out of the Frying Pan beckoned from my bedside table. From the three stacks of topics ranging from religion to care-giving to humor to food, it was Gillian’s voice that reached out like the best kind of friend, the only one who really “gets” you.

I just love happy endings, especially when getting to them takes an awful lot of hard work. I just wish that I lived near enough to go have some of that friend chicken and lemon chess pie made by the Chef, herself.

You can read more about Gillian Clark’s life and her book in this review/interview at The Sister Project.

Trailer Park Eggplant Fritters

What comes around goes around, even in trailer parks. Even in the minds of those who don't actually live in trailer parks (any more) but who can't quite shake elements of the experience...

So I'm giving some Showin Off Love to my friend, Mira Dessy, a woman whose love of healthy food is apparent not just on her blog grains & more, but in the way she lives (Mira uses words like "holistic" and "supportive" on her blog bio, even though she stays right down the highway from me...)

I liked the sound of one of Mira's many recipes -- but I thought some of the ingredients that she "had on hand" were funny. Grapeseed oil? Ezekiel flour?

So I couldn't resist daring to make the Trailer Park Version. Mira egged me on and, one beer later, I was documenting my trial for all the (small) world to see on Facebook.   

I'm feeling a new career coming on... (guess I'd better hurry before the cholesterol catches up with me.)

Praying Away the Objectivity of Divorce

"If you're not willing to stick your neck out and get your head lopped off for your child's welfare, then you shouldn't have procreated in the first place!"

That was me, in a recent phone call with a friend. We were discussing the dismay of divorcing adults who seem to find it impossible to keep their offspring's best interests at the heart of all their choices.

Yes. I get a tad harsh with my opinions.

And before you click away with disgust at my robustly hateful delivery, let me say that I'm daily aware of my own hypocrisy and humanity. That doesn't seem to put a dent in what spews from my mind, sometimes.

In her post, The Folly of Adults, Sharon Salzberg juxtaposes a little girl's prayer for "bad people" against the more usual grown-up behavior of objectifying "other" humans. From her recollections of the 2005 London Metro bombings to a trailer for a recent movie (Orphan), Salzberg connects the points of conspiracy in which we all engage, from insensitive to atrocious.

As Salzberg puts it, simply:

That kind of objectification lies at the heart of cruelty, heartlessness, and so much casual indifference.

Of course, the reasons we objectify other creatures -- who, as some faiths teach, are really not even separate from our own selves -- are so complex as to be nearly impossible to tease apart from our motivating drives. Nearly.

I have managed to create a family constellation that is different from the normal Divorced-with-Kids pattern. It was tough for most of our friends to fathom when I let my son's father, from whom I'd been divorced at that point for 5-ish years, move into the home that I shared with my boy and our menagerie. Fortunately, our closest friends and most of our fellow church-mates are rather wild and woolly, so they "got it" faster and with more ease than the neighbor-strangers who surround us in our conservative, middle-class enclave.

Trying to be mindful here of sounding self-glorifying, what it took for us -- me, the boy, and his father -- to meld our previously pain-filled existences into one relatively (and often discordantly) harmonious mix is simple: sacrifice.

In this household, we've all given up a lot. The point of our sacrifice is clear, however, and resonates like a dorje and bell -- our son has gained far more than we have lost. His "individual" prize expands to all around him in ways that are only partly evident now with hints of the greater good beyond.

My friend, the hapless bystander who witnessed my latest step into the chasm of un-right speech, recently declared with delight, "We are all brothers and sisters." There are no "others," though it is a frame of thought quite difficult to maintain when others seem determined to draw lines and pick sides.

Here I go with another mea culpa, and my own prayer.

Cursing the Power of Lawns

Ruth Pennebaker's work resonates with me and my little life. Her post, Drop That Drill!, reminded me of why I grew up in a 3-bedroom windowless box in the burbs. While my dad does indeed have a few handy mechanical inclinations, mowing the lawn wasn't one of them. 10x10 patios only have a smidge o' weeds to pull (and kids' proximity to the ground is perfect for that particular and safer task...)

I abhor grass. I know some people really love yardwork. I don't understand. And don't try to make me.

If you haven't read Ruth, one of the Fabulous Geezersisters, please do. I was introduced to her blog by Claudine Jalajas (who apparently has been so busy with her new jewelry-making adventure that she's behind on her Life As A Super Mom...)

Drop That Drill!

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When Ranting at the Kitchen Table Just Won't Do

I've always had a lot of friends who like ranting. Birds of a feather, right? Anyway. We used to jump up on our youthful soapboxes in the 70's, waving our hands and ranting about what was left of the war and what was becoming of women's rights. Then we marched and yelled about discrimination toward and abandonment of HIV positive people.

Now -- a sure sign of aging -- my son and his father like to laugh at me while I rail against editors of the little local freebie newspapers. On one hand, their chronic lapses in grammatical and topical judgment make me feel superior; then again, they are making a living, right?

Lisa Jaffe Hubbell figured out another way and place to get her good word out. She writes Letters to Famous People. I like it a lot.

My favorite so far: Dear God,...

I'm thinking I know some folks who'd be downright pleased if I'd find a similarly quiet way to carry on with my bad self and attitude. Don't get me started.