Chugach, Bears and a Suburban Mom

July 19, 2016September 20, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

The first Saturday morning of our family vacation found the four of us at the Albert Loop trailhead near the Eagle River Nature Center of Chugach State Park, Alaska. This was supposed to be an easy, well-kept, three mile loop that would take us past crystal clear streams to a spectacular view of a mountain valley. We assured our nine and seven-year-old that they would be able to handle the hike by showing them through phone apps how far we had hiked other days: one and a quarter miles around University Lake next to our hotel, one and a half miles on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail in Anchorage. Just wandering around the fourth of July fair was probably a couple of miles when it was all said and done. We all felt pretty confident.

We showed up about an hour before the nature center actually opened and read the notices pinned to the door to get oriented. There were bears nearby, and what we needed to do was to stay together and stay loud. You never want to surprise a bear, but he will steer clear of you if you are noisy and generally annoying. If a bear approaches you, you should stand your ground, and never ever run as they may begin a chase. Another chart explained all the reasons why standing your ground is helpful. A guidebook I had assured us that only polar bears stalk humans, and we were thousands of miles from polar bear habitat. As a last resort you could use your bear spray if the bear charged. We didn’t have bear spray (before researching this trip I wondered if bear spray was for spraying on ourselves to repel bears or if it was for spraying at the bears-for the record it’s something you spray in a bear’s face).

Got

Nervous.

We live in the suburbs of Chicago. When I camped as a little girl the most you had to worry about was a raccoon in your tent. A goose coming at you aggressively. A squirrel getting a little too familiar with humans and peeing all over your gear. No bears. No moose. Nothing really… deadly.

And here I was about to march my kids through bear territory for a vacation memory. Without a guide. Without other people on the path. Without bear spray (God help me, if I ever had to use it I’d probably spray myself in the face instead and just be putting a peppery garnish on the bear’s next meal).

But, I do tend to get anxious when there is nothing really to be afraid of. My husband looked like he was still game, so I swallowed it down and we started off. He didn’t look nervous until we were hemmed into a narrow pathway with very high grasses on all sides of us.

Up until that moment we had been talking casually, searching the trees and shrubs around us for less intimidating wildlife. Once we got to the grasses the need to keep noisy became something we both felt strongly about. The boys were confused as to why we needed to keep chatting about nothing, so my genius husband got them talking about the app “My Singing Monsters”. I swear to you that they did not stop talking over the next hour and a half. About two minutes into the boys talking, I realized that they would keep us constantly conversating, but they weren’t particularly loud. I added in claps, loud cheerleading claps with an ever-changing rhythm. We trudged on, past the grasses and through thickets of trees and mosquitos, scaring away every animal within earshot. Except a Great Horned owl. He did, however, seem annoyed.

About three quarters of a mile in we came across a path sign saying that the normal trail had been washed away by recent rainstorms. We could retreat or follow a bypass route. Hoping that the bypass wouldn’t take us back into low-visibility grass, we stomped forward. The trail became a mass of tangled roots that we couldn’t ignore, so our attention became divided between watching the forest and watching our feet. I clapped even louder and faster, exhorting the boys to be careful as we still had a long ways to go and we could not carry them if they got a twisted ankle. My husband was leading the way, and the boys followed him and I brought up the rear, listening to chatter about how to get new monsters on an app and clapping furiously “We will, we will, rock you.” This was definitely not the serene, life-affirming communion with nature we had been promised. At one point I know I was singing Macklemore’s “Ceiling Can’t Hold Us” at the top of my lungs.

Then off to my left I heard something. It sounded like the loud exhale of a very large creature at about the height of my shoulder and ten feet away. I tried to explain to my husband that I heard something. He looked around, decided he hadn’t seen anything and kept going. Between the mosquitos and the large mammal I was sure was right next to me, I wasn’t about to stop and get super quiet to find out what it really was. (Later my husband would confess that he looked in the trees far away, not the shrubs near me, and excitedly said, “Aw man, I wish you had explained where to look, I bet something was there, that would have been awesome!” to which I replied, “Are you insane?!?”)

We advanced on a bridge and were able to relax for a moment, me shaking out my hands, my husband asking the boys to pause on the “My Singing Monsters” talk for a second. There were crystal clear streams, and interesting birds, and most importantly less trees so we could tell that at least here there were no bears within a hundred-yard radius. We took pictures and trudged on.

Finally we finished, unscathed if a little jumpy. The nature center was finally open and we overheard a worker explain that lots of people saw black bears on the path just in the last day or so. Later on I would tell my husband, “And no one will see any today, you’re welcome other hikers. I did the heavy lifting of scaring them away for you.” He guessed that they were probably the sort of people who were hoping to see a bear in his natural habitat. To that I shrugged and gave a look as if to say, “Sucks to be them, I’m all about the self-preservation.” And I’ll be damned if some hikers think that them seeing a bear is more important than me not seeing my baby boys being eaten by black bears on a family vacation.

We ate granola bars and went to the bathroom and set back out for the half-mile hike that EVERYBODY takes. A lady in a skirt and flip-flops preceded us, holding her iPad up to take pictures on this fifteen minute, totally cleared path. A bunch of other tourists like us walked up and down the trails, totally sure that they would not be part of a bear attack that day. And we were finally able to get quiet for a second and actually enjoy the view.

And as much as I was eventually teased for looking like a crazy lady, clapping and yelling through a state park, the kids and my husband and I all decided that that was enough adventure for us for one day. Possibly for the whole summer.

In a Land of Twelve Kinds of Cupcakes…

May 2, 2016May 2, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ 2 Comments

For my younger son’s seventh birthday we had an experimental bake-off as one of his presents. He is always coming up with flavor combinations he wants to try, be it a lemon peanut butter cup (which was actually amazing) to an apple orange soymilk smoothie (a lot less amazing). He has wanted to experiment with cupcake flavors forever, so when he got home from school we had a whole table of ingredients and sprinkles and frosting ready to mess around with. We whipped up basic vanilla and chocolate batter and set out all of our extracts (vanilla, almond, peppermint, orange, lemon, coconut and anise) all of the fruit in the house, nuts and candies and toffee bits and chocolate chips and marshmallows and food coloring and Teddy Grahams.

He was beside himself. The four of us, him, me, my husband and my older son would make three different experimental flavors each, and we started plotting and planning and dicing and mixing. In no particular order we ended up with…

Peanut butter-banana-chocolate with chocolate frosting
Lemon-banana-vanilla with yellow lemon-vanilla frosting
Maple-pecan-vanilla with cream cheese frosting
Chocolate-marshmallow with chocolate frosting and Teddy Grahams
Peppermint-chocolate-sprinkles with chocolate frosting and holiday sprinkles
Vanilla-strawberry with vanilla frosting and red sprinkles
Chocolate-Rice Krispies with purple-tinted vanilla frosting
Orange-chocolate-chocolate chip with orange-tinted vanilla frosting
Vanilla-almond-cherry jelly bean with pink-tinted vanilla frosting and a red jelly bean
Lemon zest-chocolate chip-vanilla with orange-tinted vanilla frosting
Vanilla-orange-pine nut-freeze dried strawberry with orange marmalade vanilla frosting
Classic chocolate with teal-tinted peppermint vanilla frosting and pastel sprinkles

The cupcake production was going full tilt…until it came grinding to a halt. In the midst of us all being excited about trying our cupcakes out for dessert that night, my husband casually mentioned that we could have friends and family test them out the next day at the huge family birthday in our little guy’s honor. That stopped him dead in his tracks. He suddenly refused to do any more – even though he had only come up with two of his three designs. Even though he had been so bouncy before. Even though the only reason we had to come up with this idea was that we knew it would make him extravagantly happy. He stopped.

We should have known. Our seven-year-old is terrified of other people’s reactions to his creative work. He has been known to throw Lego creations when they don’t work out, or to literally not move once he feels he is being watched too closely. He dances joyfully at home and messes around with a guitar, but the thought of taking lessons for either paralyzes his fun.

He sat angry on the couch as first I tried to coax out of him what was wrong, then his father took a turn. Eventually my husband was able to get him to admit that he was worried other people might hate his cupcakes. We first reassured him that people would love them, and if they didn’t it would be okay. When that was met with a skeptic scowl, we then reassured him that only our little family of four would ever taste them if that would make him happiest. My husband got him to design his last cupcake-the classic chocolate one with the elaborate topping.

He is my child, for sure.

I am the one who procrastinated on writing papers until the last moment because if they turned out badly I could blame it on the time crunch. I am the one who was given an opportunity to write the introduction to an online curriculum series in college and turned it down because it made me too nervous. I am the one who decided I would rather be “well-rounded” than put all my energy into ballet. I am the one who got solos, but would then show up to voice lessons and even competitions woefully underprepared. I am the one who refused to let anyone coach me on my monologue audition I would perform just once for over twenty colleges’ theater departments.

Sometimes my fears honed my actual work into a fine point – my almost late papers taught me how to get an “A” even with limited time by using my (not-often-used) laser focus, my monologue got me admission into ten different theater departments. But then I kept shooting myself in the foot. I didn’t go into theater for fear of a lifetime of rejections. I don’t dance or sing anymore except in my own kitchen. I still write though, and I am trying for my youngest to show him that putting your creative work out there in the world is incredibly difficult, especially for him and for me, but that it really is the only way to be happy. It is the only way to be true to yourself, to be honest with who you are and what you bring to the world – putting your work out there for other people to see.

The beauty of living in a land with twelve kinds of cupcake is that you haven’t put all your hopes and dreams into just one cupcake. When you make just one, you are scared of your aunt who doesn’t care for chocolate, worried about the cousin who is allergic to nuts, terrified that another cousin will think it is too boring or that your grandpa with think it too crazy or that your grandma will say she likes it even if she really doesn’t. When you have twelve different kinds of cupcakes, twelve experiments of flavor and texture and color it is okay that the jelly beans fell out of the bottom of one but left a delicate delicious flavor. It is okay that the peanut butter banana was too dense, it’s a great surprise that lemon and banana together is light and airy. It is more than okay to make a classic chocolate cupcake perfectly simple and beautiful decorated.

I am trying to take my own lesson from this. Right now I am grateful I am letting myself send so many cupcakes into the world, because I am less worried about each one being perfect.

I have, out there in submission-land and in no particular order…

A very short piece about school shooting fears
A very long piece about a hurricane evacuation while I taught high school
A medium piece about being mistreated as a patient with chronic illness
A rewrite of a blog piece about speech delays, open heart surgery and one-syllable words
A rejected piece about science fairs and art that turned into a blog post

And

An accepted piece about baby food, insecurity and watermelon

Eventually, in the sixth hour of his family party, our youngest let other people try out his cupcakes, once the big cake had been served, once the numbers of guests dwindled and he felt happy and content and comfortable with sharing his creativity. I think it went well, and I hope both he and I remember that while sharing can be scary, there are tricks to make it less so. And, ultimately, even if you are temporarily paralyzed with fear, moving forward anyways is worth it.

S.T.E.A.M Punk

April 27, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

Science Fair

Our public elementary school calls itself a “Math and Science Academy”. It is a great petri dish for the sons and daughters of all sorts of engineers, a starter culture for future scientists and mathematicians. There is a heavy emphasis on STEM here. STEM is an effort to add more Science, Technology, Engineering and Math into the curriculum. Our school has integrated engineering lessons into each grade level, and prides itself on its science fair. Pardon me, its STEM fair. Oh wait, I stand corrected. As I look at our application packet I found out that its name has changed again. This time it will be a STEAM fair.

What does the “A” stand for, you may be wondering. Arithmetic? Archeology? Astrophysics? Nope. It stands for Art. We are trying to cram all of Art, the entirety of anything that could be called artistry into one little letter.

My husband is an engineer, and my two sons are scientifically inclined. But, they are also my sons and I have been, and still am, a singing, dancing, writing, literature-loving, theater-going, right-brained kind of girl. Believe me, I don’t want them to go through school so focused on data and numbers that they don’t see the beauty of the world around them. To be fair, their school has dedicated art and music teachers, and my six-year-old asked me the other day if I knew who Piet Mondrian was. I asked back incredulously, “Do you?” While I appreciate the idea of adding more art to my kids’ lives, Art shouldn’t be a token subject, shoe-horned into a science fair.

While Science, Technology and Engineering are considered distinct subjects in their own rights, Art (as just one letter of STEAM) is jammed together as if it only encompassed one discipline. Right away I could break “Art” into, at the very least, visual and performance art. On the visual side of things, I can think of the distinct crafts of sculpting, painting, drawing, makeup and hair design, animation, cinematography, photography, interior design, fashion design, floral arrangement, graphic design, lighting design, illustration, weaving and ceramics. On the performing side of things, I can think of the distinct crafts of acting, dancing, singing, improvisation, playing an instrument, directing, stand-up comedy, puppetry and motivational speaking. This doesn’t even include the artistic endeavors of creative writers that don’t fit neatly into the above categories: poetry and memoir and novels and graphic novels and screenplays and plays. What a disservice to shove all of that into the single “A” that is allowed.

But my main criticism of trying to create a STEAM fair is that pesky requirement of all science fairs – that students learn and apply the scientific method. Each project must propose a hypothesis, set up an experiment with multiple controls and just one variable to see if the hypothesis is correct, record the findings and report your conclusions. It is a rigorous and disciplined METHOD for examining the world, and if it is not as rigorous, disciplined and objective as possible, the experiment is at best a waste of time and resources. I have great respect for the scientific method as a critical tool for examining and bettering the world.

And I had a great time mocking the scientific method as I tried to figure out what an “Arts” based project would look like.

For my STEAM Fair project, my hypothesis is that my impression of Hillary Clinton is funnier than my impression of Bernie Sanders.

In controlling the variables of my experiment, I have already decided to pick two candidates of the same political party and level of fame.

I will perform impressions thirty seconds in duration, for the exact same audience members on two separate days.

I will have three assistants record notes, one will record the number of people who laughed at each impression, the second will record the duration of laughter from the first guffaw to the last sigh with a stopwatch and the third will have a decibel meter to record how loud the laughter gets.

I will be only varying my voice, facial expressions and mannerisms to reflect each character – the words spoken in each impression will be identical.

Update: My results were inconclusive as no one laughed. For future experiments I would perhaps vary the words spoken by each candidate to reflect a satirized version of what they might normally say.

Now, let me be clear – All great artists, in every field of artistry, experiment. None use the scientific method.

There are far too many variables to account for. When an improv troupe skewers Clinton and Sanders they use different actors, different mannerisms, and different lines for different audiences as they experiment. Every variable changes and shifts, and more often than not they still get a laugh. They get to the same desired outcome with a million different formulas. The opposite is generally true of a baking soda papier-mache volcano, where only one formula will give you the desired outcome – a giant mess on the elementary school gym floor.

It is very rare that an artist would want to, or be able to, test one variable at a time. When Picasso painted “The Old Guitarist” he did not present us with an expressionist version in a full spectrum of color alongside his blue-toned melancholy piece to see what effect color had on the guitarist’s emotional impact. His blue period might be the closest we come to seeing an artist experimenting with one variable at a time, but his subject matter over those years was far from a scientifically sound control. He didn’t tint photographs of fuzzy ducklings blue to see if simply “the color blue” was enough to alter our perception of the duckling. He still experimented with subject matter and perspective and materials and negative space, while he experimented with the color blue.

And what is the measurement you can use to see if your hypothesis for a work of art was correct? Public reaction? Favorable critiques? Popularity? Unpopularity? Anger, sadness, longevity, laughter? Art is, above all, subjective, not objective. There is no objective experiment, nor any objective measurement for a work of art. But, in spite of its subjectivity, data can still be taken, the results can still be analyzed, and new experiments performed, new ground broken and new power discovered. I would LOVE to see an art fair like that, one full of experimentation, of breaking new ground and new forms, and exploring new talent.

Art doesn’t deserve to be shoved in next to scientific experiments, just because we haven’t made the room for it. The value of the scientific method, or teaching children to critically explore the world around them for concrete and actionable solutions, shouldn’t be diluted because we didn’t give Art any room to breathe. And you are just making it awkward for everyone if I have to explain my Clinton/Sanders experiment again, especially next to the second-grader who just won first place with his wonderfully thorough presentation of which liquid cleans a penny best. (Coca-Cola, his hypothesis was proven out by his experiment, it’s Coca-Cola).

An Article on The Mighty

April 1, 2016April 1, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

me, boys, flowers

(They ask you to include a picture for The Mighty, and I had no clue what would work with this piece. So, here’s a cute picture of the boys. PS my husband says I’m trying to fool people into thinking I’m younger than I am as this picture is at least 4 or 5 years old. I told him that strangers have no idea how old the boys and I really are-I’m using it!)

Hello Everybody!

I had an odd writing day yesterday. I had come up with a topic I really wanted to write about: my reaction to hearing often that people with illnesses, disabilities or special needs don’t want unsolicited advice (I have felt that way before) and why we may be missing out by keeping quiet (or insisting that other people keep their thoughts to themselves).

I composed it in a couple of morning hours, did cursory editing and knew immediately that I wanted to get it to The Mighty. I follow The Mighty on Facebook and love the stories they share about people with all sorts of lives that need a little extra care. Invisible illness, visible illness, mental illness, disability, special needs. I felt this was the right placement for this piece and sent it off by 10:30.

By 1:30 I had an e-mail saying it was accepted and by 8:00 at night it was published online. They move fast!!!

So here it is Why I Want People to Share Stories About Treatment Options. Hope you are able to check it out.

Thanks!

Kristin

Valentine Gifts

February 1, 2016February 18, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

Valentine gifts

It is time for gifts again, smaller gifts than at Christmas, but it’s time to show our loved ones how much we appreciate having them around.

My younger son is squirreled away in the playroom and has commanded us several times, “Do not come in here.” I know this is his order when he is working on a present for someone and doesn’t want to ruin the surprise. With Valentine’s Day coming up, it is very possible that he has three presents he is working on in there- one for his brother, one for his father and one for me. We get a little nervous when he emerges an hour later and there is smudged ink all over his arms, and a stamp like a tattoo on his right wrist. My husband asks him, “I won’t invade your privacy, but if you look like that, is the room pretty messy, too?”

He nods, “A little.”

He tells us he will clean it up, and my older son offers to help, as long as he’s allowed in the room. He is, and the two of them go back and forth with wet paper towels, and assure us that everything is cleaned up. It could be a sketch, or a 3-D paper sculpture of a caterpillar, a comic strip, or a handprint. Last Christmas he made a series of diagrams: instructions, to go with a handful of Legos. He had created a Lego set he and his brother could build together. I was so impressed!

And I am so curious about my gift.

I’m the sort of person who wants to know what a movie is about before I see it. I’ll watch trailers, read think-pieces about how the director felt or what the actors endured, listen to gossip about backstage antics. My husband does not. He wants very much to be surprised. He even gets annoyed when the opening credits to a reality show give away almost everything that is going to happen, yelling, “We’re already watching it! You don’t have to sell us on it! Mute it, and tell me when the opening’s over.”

Sometimes I’m glad he is so strict in his I want to be surprised point of view. A few years ago my oldest son wanted to buy me a Christmas present, and he was confident he had thought up something perfect. My husband was the one to take him shopping, so of course he knew what I had gotten. I pestered my husband a bit, trying to get him to reveal what was bought, because my curiosity had gotten the better of me. This was the first time either of the boys had wanted to buy me something, and that my guy had something specific in mind. I wondered what he thought of me, how well he knew me, what he got me!

My husband put me in my place quickly saying, “I am not going to let you ruin his surprise. He really came up with something perfect, and I want him to get your full reaction as you open it.” That Christmas I opened up two brand-new cardboard-sided notebooks, with blue and white patterns on the front. Exactly the sort of notebook I used for writing in, the same kind I often stockpile since I go through them so quickly. Just the right decoration, and in my favorite color, too. I could not believe how perfect his three dollar present was, and how thoughtful he had been to come up with the idea in the first place. And as an added bonus, my husband got an extra present of me admitting that he had been right.

My husband also got the chance to surprise me with a gift, one I didn’t see coming at all. He was going to be out of town when some important blood test results of mine were going to be coming in. It was going to be emotionally rough, no matter which way they went. If they were positive, I would finally know what was wrong but have to deal with curing a disease – a tumor, or kidney disease, or adrenal failure. If they were negative there would be no big disease to handle, but also no answers as to why I felt horrible. A pair of soft flannel pajamas came in the mail, the perfect way to comfort someone when you can’t physically be there to hold them. A gift that would be appropriate to use in a hospital bed after surgery or to cuddle on the couch researching alternative medicine. It was such a lovely surprise.

So, I won’t peek to see what present is being made in the playroom. All three presents, and the surprise of getting them, make me feel so very loved. And that, I’m pretty sure, is supposed to be the point of gift-giving, and Valentine’s Day, in the first place.

Pause

November 3, 2015February 18, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ 2 Comments

Back in August, I had set myself a schedule for writing, that I would complete a 1,500 word essay for the first Wednesday of every month as part of an on-going column. I am going to put that on hold for a little while.

The premise of the column Pain and Joy was that I had learned a lot about all sorts of pain that I’d wanted to share, and that I am learning about joy and want to report on that as well. This month was originally going to be a “pain” installment, specifically “The Pain of Existential Dread”. My original thought was to go into the worry and fear I felt when I was suffering from an unknown illness and detailing how that fear seemed to infect my oldest who was then four. So, five years after this originally happened, I felt like things were under control and I had the distance I needed to tackle this subject. However, five years later I am again in the thick of an unknown illness. I am worried, again, about how severe this new illness might be, about how much my quality of life will be diminished, about how drastic the “cure” will be. I am back in the swamp of not knowing, of waiting ages to see a specialist, and of trying to maintain some psychological buoyancy during the process.

My children (and I bet yours, too) are emotional sponges, and when something is off-kilter they sense it quickly and it colors their world almost immediately. Writing this piece right now feels like the wrong move to make. If I weren’t a parent, delving into my dark fears thoroughly and completely could be cathartic. It would be messy and ugly for a good long while, but it would be over and dealt with. Presenting a polished, articulated version of that fear to the world could open up conversations that I would be able then to discuss and I would not feel as alone. If I weren’t a parent.

I am a parent. There is the reality that if I dig deep into the dark places in my mind that it might be hard to climb back out-certainly not quickly enough to be present, completely present, for my children when they need me. What I learned the first time out with an unknown illness and the prospect of a scary diagnosis is that tears and anger are frightening to my kids, but that emotional distance is even scarier. I cannot be so absorbed in writing this right now, and risk that distance.

Also, immersing myself in this story means that for a while no other stories are being told-not the one about how the squirrels always try to eat the face off our pumpkins, not the one about my youngest child’s very first goal, not the one about how we spent all weekend as a family playing Risk, not the one about how our Christmas lists are coming along. The dominant story of “What will happen to me?” would be the one I would get trapped in, and if I’m trapped there, all of us eventually are trapped there. That isn’t really fair.

So, I have decided to pause the column, for now. I may write the next “Joy” installment. I may not. I might write short frothy pieces for a bit, or short cranky pieces. I may just journal. This illness is making life less predictable than I imagined, so I am going to give myself the grace and wiggle room to ignore self-imposed deadlines and goalposts. I am giving myself the luxury to write what and when and where and how I see fit for a while. That, I think, is something healthy I can do for myself and my family now that my health is suddenly, again, up for grabs.

Mothers Always Write

October 26, 2015February 18, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

Hi everyone!

I have an essay published on Mothers Always Write today called “Muffled”. It is about my younger son and his struggles with speech delays and with not being able to hear well when he was three. I would absolutely love for you to visit their website at

http://mothersalwayswrite.com/muffled/

They have many wonderful essays and poems through all the years of being a mom.

Thanks!

Kristin

I’m Fine

October 21, 2015February 18, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

My oldest had a rough day at school last year. He ended up throwing up in a bathroom and was weaving around the hallways when a teacher who knew him noticed he looked green. She guided him to the nurse’s office and asked him how he was feeling.

He replied, “I’m fine,” in a nonchalant and off-handed manner. The teacher was stunned and amused, because he obviously was not fine. When she later told me the story of how this had all played out she felt so bad for him, but also thought it was endearingly funny. I did, too.

My youngest has a swollen cheek right now, and we think it’s from a six-year molar coming in and there being a little infected gum tissue. Yesterday he told me his jaw hurt, and when I asked if it still did today he said, “No.” I asked him if he was sure and his answer was, “If I distract myself it doesn’t hurt. As long as I don’t think about it.”

A bit exasperated I pressed further, “If you think about it, how does it feel?”

“It hurts.”

“So it does hurt?”

“Sure, it does. But not if I’m distracted.”

I think this is the legacy of having a parent with a chronic illness.

The boys have seen me throw up suddenly and move on with my day. They’ve known times when I was having trouble walking but still stayed with them at the park after school. They know that a lot of the time I don’t feel great, but I cope as well as I can. They say to listen to your body, and I absolutely do, but I have the added dimension that sometimes my body is a straight-up liar. It sends unnecessary pain signals all the time, it tells me I need a nap when really I need to exercise, it tells me I need tons of sugar when that will make me crash harder. So I ignore it. I power through. I tough it out.

The boys have started to do the same. We use the phrase, “It’s not the end of the world,” a lot in our household, that and, “It could always be worse.” We’ve gotten philosophical about pain and illness around here. I think our collective pain tolerance has gone up, unintentionally, and recalibrated. My oldest started out as a toddler who screamed bloody murder at the smallest scrape, and now throws up and claims, “I’m fine.”

But, surprisingly, now my boys also trust me when I tell them that they should probably stay home from school, or see a doctor, or get a flu shot. They used to try to tough everything out, going to soccer practice with a fever or pushing and crying for a playdate when they had been up coughing all night. They don’t do that anymore. It doesn’t seem heroic, it seems like suffering unnecessarily. Maybe they’re just older and wiser. Or maybe it’s because of what they see.

They see me nap, and rest, and exercise, and check my blood sugar, and prepare healthy food. Taking care of yourself when you are really too sick to power through is absolutely normalized. This is life, this is what people do. We push on when life isn’t that bad, when “it could be a lot worse”. When it gets worse we stop and rest and give our bodies a chance to catch up.

Since I have been having such a dysfunctional time of it with my body, I worried that the boys were going to end up with a dysfunctional relationship with their mostly healthy bodies. One day they will be the only ones monitoring the state of their health or illness. They should be off on their own some time ten or fifteen years from now, without a mom to check up on how they really feel. Luckily, I think we are inching towards balance, and I think that is because they have a sick parent, not in spite of it.

The Joy of New Clothes

October 7, 2015February 18, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

“Nicholas just opens his drawer and takes whatever shirt!” Christopher is incredulous that his older brother, the one he looks up to, the one who was his first hero and the first person who was able to make him laugh, would be so cavalier about what he would wear.

Nicholas truly does not care much about clothing; his daily uniform of t-shirts and track pants changes only on special occasions, when we might be able to get him into jeans and a sweater. Even when he asserted his independence as a toddler, he truly didn’t fight us in the arena of “what to wear”, even though he was a fierce competitor in every other way. So, as he grew through to the eight-year-old he is today, we decided to take advantage of his not really caring all that much. When we go clothes shopping we have a plan that involves multiples of the basketball shorts, track pants and t-shirts he likes to wear. We hit one store for about an hour and a half every six months. Done and done.

Christopher gets these hand-me-downs, an extensive collection of not really well-thought-out, functional but not fashionable, interchangeable clothes. For a while he seemed to feel okay about them, as they were comfortable and usually were decorated with cartoon characters he liked. Then it wasn’t okay. Then came the showdown.

It was before a gymnastics class in the dead of winter. With polar vortexes and sub-zero temperatures, we would layer up like crazy before heading out somewhere. That particular day he had on thick socks, boots, long track pants, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a hoodie, a double-layered overcoat, a hat, a pair of gloves and a scarf.

Once inside the too-warm gym, (an environment well suited to keeping muscles from cramping and keeping little girls in leotards from getting a chill, but horrible for wearing sweatshirts) he took off his jacket and gloves but would not take off his hoodie. The flow of our morning stalled, and I was not thrilled about the ramifications of his refusal. Christopher can be incredibly stubborn, and we had been having a long winter of uneasy truces. I was picking this battle, and would see it through.

He crossed his arms and just stopped. I began by joking, “Christopher, you need to take your hoodie off, you silly goose, or you’ll roast to death during class!”

A grunt.

“Christopher, you are going to feel too hot and get too sweaty.”

Another grunt.

“Christopher Wagner, you are not going in there with that sweatshirt on, I am not going to let you.”

An anguished growl half under his breath.

“That is it! I have had enough! Why in the world won’t you take off your sweatshirt-you do every other class, every other time, what is going on with you today? And we’re not going to just stand to the side the entire class. You have one more minute to take that off or we are going home, young man!”

Tears.

“Are you taking off that sweatshirt?”

“NO!” He finally answered me in a yell. I grabbed his jacket and started feeding his arms through the sleeves, and silently sat at his feet shoving feet into boots. With a tense, almost whispered, “Get up,” from me, he got up. I zipped him, grabbed his hand and went out the doors. He didn’t protest leaving, and he tends not to. Christopher is fatalistic and grim when he accepts his fate, when he decides that he would rather accept the consequences of his stubbornness than acquiesce. I will say this for him, he has some sort of internal integrity that will not allow him to buckle under threat of missed classes, or no dessert, or zero screen time unless he knows he’s being ridiculous. When he sticks to his guns, I know it is very important to him. Once we got back to the car, I kept quiet and used the silence to cool off and hear myself think. After a few minutes, I ask him more gently, “Why, child, why? What was that all about?”

Finally unclenching he gave me an answer, “I don’t like football.”

What football had to do with anything I could not figure out. Then I realized that in a rush I had grabbed clothes for him that morning. We had little time to quibble about what he might or might not want to wear, so I ran upstairs, grabbed his brown track pants and the only brown shirt that went with them. The brown shirt had orange cleats on it and proudly proclaimed just one word in all caps “FOOTBALL”. And apparently my youngest does not like football.

And apparently he is very, very tired of misrepresenting who he is and what he likes. Because his options are limited to what his older brother liked just well enough to shove into a shopping cart two years ago, Christopher has had to lie about who he was. Our clothes communicate for us, and Christopher couldn’t take this miscommunication any more.

My husband, Greg, was the third of four boys and said, “Yeah, hand-me-downs save a lot of money, but it does stink. I never had new clothes, except for family pictures when Mom wanted us all to match. Let’s take him shopping, let him pick out things for himself.”

I introduced the idea to Christopher, and he was smiled and covered his mouth with his hand and then squeaked out, “Really?”

“Really.”

As we all stepped through the doors of a department store, Greg suddenly remembered, “Oh wait, guys. I need to get a couple of new dress shirts, can we head over there first? Then we’ll go to the kids section?” He looked to Christopher for the okay. Christopher nodded in agreement. The boys and I wandered around racks of leather belts and blazers while Greg held up a windowpane patterned shirt and asked, “Is this too much? Should I get it in a different color? Or the same color but a different pattern?”

Christopher found the tie rack and his eyes widened. He touched the vibrantly colored ties gently and showed me a swirl of color here or polka dot pattern there. Greg’s attempts to pick a shirt were interrupted with, “Daddy, you should get this one!” and “Daddy, you should get that one!” Christopher wanted so much that someone, someone he knew, would get to wear these beautiful, soft pieces of fabric he couldn’t contain himself. When Greg politely skirted the idea of buying ties one too many times, Christopher sighed quietly, “I wish I could use my money to have this.”

Wasn’t that why we were here in the first place? To get for Christopher clothing that he loved, that he wanted, that he felt wonderful in? I bit my lip trying not to smile too broadly and scare him away and said, “Sweetie, do you know that they make ties for little kids? And dress shirts, too? Do you want to go look for those?”

There have only been a handful of times in Christopher’s life that I have seen his face light up the way it did in the midst of the menswear section that day. A new possibility flashed into his consciousness that had seemed remote and unattainable before, and now he was told that not only did these clothes exist, but that he could get them for himself right then. There would be no waiting to see if a better coupon came in next week, no declaration that he probably didn’t need any more clothes because he had enough. I took his hand and guided him to the boys section of clothing, wooshing past the hoodies and track pants and athletic-themed t-shirts and right to the dress clothes put out for Easter. “Here we are!” I declared triumphantly and here we were.

We loaded our arms with multiple colors of dress shirts, a bouquet of clip-on ties and a couple of pairs of slacks and marched right over to the dressing room. I felt nervously excited as I helped button him up, as I tucked his shirt into his pants and clipped on his tie. He stepped back for a moment, looked himself over top to bottom and smiled, a huge, broad, unbelievable smile. He was amazed with himself, with the transformation he had gone through in the space of a minute. He pouted his lips and grabbed the knot of the tie with one hand, the length with his other and straightened it saying, “Men do this.” I covered my mouth with my hands and let my eyes keep smiling at him, “Yes they do, they do that.” A moment later he straightened his shoulders and said proudly, “I look like a scientist.” I suppressed a little laugh because I didn’t want him for a second to believe I was laughing at him, but my heart was jumping out of my chest. I had not realized that he had been quietly studying the clothing of the grown men around him, admiring how they held themselves and what their clothes represented. I hadn’t realized how completely happy he would be to wear that himself.

We left that day with white undershirts, three dress shirts in light blue, burgundy and white, five different ties, a pair of black slacks and a Lego watch, because his new mature look would have been incomplete without a watch. We left the store with a very, very happy five-year-old.

Houswifery and Rage Against the Machine

September 30, 2015February 18, 2016 ~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

I have tried to like housework.

I really have. I have quotes scribbled into my notebooks about the Zen nature of caring for the objects that serve you well. One reminds me that caring for pots and pans we use or combing our tangled hair, is an act of self-care and should be done carefully. Another is a conversation on how to reach enlightenment, where the student asks the teacher how to do so, and the teacher replies, “Chop wood, carry water”. The student then asks what one does after enlightenment and the teacher replies, “Chop wood, carry water.” The act of cleaning, scrubbing, folding and putting away can be meditative.

I have more quotes scattered around the house and Pinterest boards about how women authors balanced housekeeping and writing. (This is not a question many male authors have had put to them, nor have many commented on it spontaneously) Agatha Christie found herself plotting novels while doing dishes. I think about the episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon takes a menial job to free his brain for a creative breakthrough.

I own books called The Hoarder in You, Love the Home You Have, and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

I have bribed myself with clothing, and lunches out of the house, and new books to try to goad myself into the domestic duties are mine to tackle.

My husband is a neat and tidy person, an equal partner in shopping and cleaning and childcare when he is home. But four out of seven days he is not, and the entirety of our house’s functionality rests on me.

The only way I have found to prod myself to do the right thing, when all these other things fail, is The Housekeeping Playlist.

The Playlist is raucous.

I yell along to it instead of singing.

Head-banging and fists pumping in the air might be involved.

And it consists almost entirely of Rage Against the Machine songs.

People of the Sun. Bulls on Parade. Renegades of Funk. Guerilla Radio. Testify.

Sleep Now in the Fire.

Once I get a good dose of “F*ck the system” out of my system I am ready to tackle dirty dishes and wiping down stainless steel appliances. Maybe it’s my way of announcing to myself that it’s okay that I feel pissy and whiny and don’t want to be stuck doing this. Maybe it’s the deep down irony of yelling at the patriarchy and then looking like a stereotypical housewife perpetuating the system. Maybe it’s a way for me to remember that me not wanting to clean is a ridiculously small and petty thing, compared to what bigger injustices are going on in the world. Or maybe I just need a beat and some passion in my day.

We watched American Hustle last year, and there is a scene where Jennifer Lawrence is smashing around the house to “Live and Let Die”, yellow rubber gloves on, vacuum nearby and ready to go. I yelled out, “That’s me!” as my husband started laughing his ass off gasping, “That’s you.”

I really tried to like housework. I did. Once in a while, you’ll still see me staring off contemplatively while I wipe down a counter. Or peacefully sweeping up. Or on my hands and knees humming while I scrub like Cinderella. But, if it looks like I’m having some sort of seizure through the kitchen window, the playlist is most likely why. And the house might just end up spotless.