Jane Articles

Yesterday was blissful as Mother’s Day always is. Mr. G always makes a bigger fuss than necessary and I always let him. It’s my wifely duty to be a little pampered.

Saturday night we couldn’t quite agree on where to eat but we all agreed that we’d be eating out. The kids wanted Laurel Tavern but they don’t really understand that it’s a bar. So they don’t understand that on a Saturday night no one wants them there. Further the place is packed and loud and Laker-y.

So we drove past Laurel Tavern in an effort to show them why we wouldn’t be eating there, looped across the street to Lala’s which was uncomfortably crowded and finally landed at La Loteria which I was sort of angling for because I wanted a good margarita with tamarind and sour salt. Mr. G hates Mexican food and it was shitty of me to make everyone go there but I was feeling selfish on Mother’s Day Eve.

We ended up at La Loteria and the only thing worse than the food was the service. The margarita was excellent but I could have made that at home. Serves me right.

I woke up Sunday at 9ish. I just lounged in bed and padded downstairs in the most leisurely way. Alexander and Mr. G headed out for a 10am baseball lesson and I ran to the farmers market as they have an amazing blackberry vendor there and I just wanted to eat blackberries until my teeth turned an unnatural color and I looked like a hillbilly, black teeth and all.

While at the farmers market everyone kept wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day. I didn’t have any children with me. I made a mental note to step up my game, even on a Sunday Morning. I bought my blackberries, my eggs, strawberries and tamales. Everything was organic except the tamales and they’re pure crap for the kids. Fat and sugar to keep them happy. Snooty fat and sugar, but fat and sugar nonetheless.

I came home from the Farmers Market and the four of us turned around and went for a hike. I sunscreened my face and neck. It was a great hike but I’m sunburned, I even have a white mark where my ponytail was.

After the hike we rolled right into Umami Burger. Amazing burgers coupled with hideous service. If you ever go to the store in Studio City either sit in Brooklyn Carlos’ section or get your food to go. I tried to not be annoyed by the servers but it’s hard. They’re just so bad. I broke my “no grain” diet and had a half a truffle burger and I swear it was worth it. They are so amazingly delicious.

After lunch we headed home and I spent two hours floating in the pool sometimes reading sometimes dozing. The kids played in the pool and I looked at them both popping through the surface of the water together and had a striking moment where they actually looked alike and my heat swelled to the size of the moon and I felt so lucky that I love my family so much and that they love each other.

By 5 it was time for Alexander to go to baseball practice and Jane and I took a quick shower and went to see Dark Shadows. It’s a terrible movie. I wanted to leave after 30 minutes but I didn’t want to ask Jane to go in case she was enjoying it. Of course it was only after the movie ended that I realized she’d have been happy to leave too. The best parts of the movie aren’t the plot or the actors, it’s all the last scenes and some special effects that truly are special.

It sounds like I didn’t enjoy the movie. I didn’t enjoy Dark Shadows but I did enjoy just being with my daughter and relaxing. It was still a great day.

At 7.30 we headed for dinner and met up with my Mom for LA’s best lobster. There’s this divey little restaurant in Reseda that makes the most amazing ginger lobster. We waited about a half hour for a table and drank the worlds cheapest chardonnay from tiny little bottles, but I was with my Mom so it was all okay. We exchanged giggly gifts and were home by 10.

Alexander fell asleep in his baseball clothes. He’s old enough that his father needs to be the one undressing him. That felt strange and bittersweet.

Then Mr. G remembered my gift. It had been outside and I’m not sure how I didn’t see it but it was exactly what I wanted.

At 8 this morning I started by reading the assembly instructions. I realized quickly that I had to buy a socket wrench with  1/2″ and a 3/4″ socket attachments. I went to OSH and had everything unpacked and ready for assembly by 9. By 9.15 I had overenthusiastically broken the first screw. Ratcheting adds power I suppose.

I was back at OSH 15 minutes later trying to find a nut and bolt to replace the one I’d broken. One of the men there helped me find a 1.5 inch replacement and I thought it seemed a little short and I’d considered picking up a two inch replacement as well since it was only an extra few cents but he convinced me that he was absolutely correct and there was no way in the world the bolt would be too short.

45 minutes later I was back at OSH getting a two inch long bolt. It was getting late in the morning.

An hour after that I had this.

I’ve had compost piles and compost bins, but I’ve never had a compost tumbler and I’m so excited in part because I love my tiny little garden but also because I cringe every time I throw out scraps.

I had the perfect Mother’s Day and I had the perfect Day After Mother’s Day because I got to play with tools all morning.

In an effort to make my teenage daughter hate me (because really, what other motive could I have?). I gave Jane two options regarding her cell phone at night.

Option 1: She can leave her cell phone plugged in downstairs

Option 2: I can add back parental controls and after 10pm she will only be able to call or text me, her grandparents and 9-1-1.

There is no option 3.

We had tears and threats. I wasn’t spoken to for two solid hours. If you’ve ever met Jane you’d know how meaningful silence is. This is a child who needs to communicate to feel alive.

“It’s my phone.” She wailed, “You treat me like a child. No one else’s parents do this.”

And I was horrified. “They don’t? Well they should.”

I went on to explain to her that there were two scenarios (two is my favorite number in this discussion). The scenarios are as follows:

Scenario 1: The other kids do have to give up their cell phones at night but don’t want to talk about it because they’re embarassed.

Scenario 2: The other kids’ parents are making a mistake.

There is no scenario 3.

With a not fully developed frontal lobe teens are notoriously poor decision makers. Add a little sleepiness to the mix and there’s just no good reason to allow a cell phone into the bedroom at night. There’s the obvious nudity issue, but there’s also something a little less terrifying that leaves a big mark on their lives. Sleeplessness.

Adults who sleep with the phone by the bed suffer from sleep deprivation. Our kids hardly get enough time to sleep with school starting so early in the morning, why give up an extra hour (or more) at night?

Jane doesn’t seem to know yet that I’m chaperoning her volleyball team for five days in June. I’ve already let some of the parents know that my plan is to have all the cell phones in the adult room at night. I’m pretty sure it’ll go over like a lead balloon but unless someone else wants to take up the chaperoning baton it’s my rules.

I can’t wait to have a dozen 13 year old girls not speaking to me. I can almost imagine the silence.

I’m reaching for my hairbrush and it’s not where it’s supposed to be. I scan the counter and see nothing so I yell Jane, where’s my hairbrush. She typically walks in, shrugs and then walks away.

Next I’m standing in her bedroom which is littered with expensive clothing that she routinely leaves on the floor to be trampled and I spy my hairbrush on her desk. I know it will be on her desk because the desk is where she does hair and nails, the bed is where she does homework.

I return to the bathroom where my husband is calmly brushing his teeth and tell him that our daughter is beyond sloppy and not allowed in the master suite. No bedroom, no bathroom, no closet. This is when he smirks and says the same thing every time, “It sounds like you live with a teenager.”

Which is not the right answer. The right answer would be him marching in and telling Jane to use her own brush, hang up her clothes and stop living like an animal. I think we know that isn’t going to happen. Let’s face it, the only people on earth who are unafraid of a teenage girl are adult women. More specifically, their mothers.

This morning Mr. G spent five minutes teaching Alexander how to do a bro hug. You know the one where you do the not quite a handshake grab and then a smack on the back?

On the upside the children are getting a phenomenal education, they should land themselves in top tier colleges and then good jobs. There will be plenty of cash for the talk doctor.

Yesterday I went to a new hairstylist who also has a 13 year old daughter. The girls have actually played soccer together but never on the same team. They know the same kids but haven’t been to the same parties, yet. As we were talking the stylist said to me, “My daughter wants a second piercing. What do you do about that?”

I told him that Jane’s been asking for one too and that I know it’s a mistake. I have more than one piercing and I’m here to tell you that one is more than enough. I can hardly squeeze on my wedding set most days.

I’m thinking of letting Jane make this mistake. She’s 13 and she’s got at least a half dozen, if not a dozen, years of horrible decision making ahead of her and my hope as her mother is that the terrible decisions she makes will have manageable consequences. My hope is that my daughter can learn how to fail. How else will she learn?

When they were little this was easy. The kids would try something new, not do well, look to me and I’d shrug. They’d shrug and try something new. Sometimes they’d fall down, they’d look at me and wonder if I’d respond to tears. I never responded with panic and they seldom cried. 

It’s the same with a teenager right?

I worry that we’ve been tricked into believing that adolescence is high stakes when really it’s just a time to learn to fall down and get back up again. The same as it was in toddlerhood, the same as it will be in adulthood. I worry that by making every decision for my child I’m stripping her of the ability to make decisions and that would be terribly cruel.

We haven’t decided how to respond to Jane about the ear piercing, but when a stranger asked me I told him that it’s a mistake that isn’t high stakes. Let’s see if I’m willing to take some of my own advice.

Last week I met Ms. Oprah Winfrey. She was everything I expected and my expectations were high.

While in St. Louis six of us were allowed to interview Oprah except we didn’t have cameras or even paper and pen. The team from OWN ran video and I’m hopeful that it will air as part of their behind the scenes features online.

Everyone introduced themselves to Ms. Winfrey and it became abundantly clear why she owned the airwaves for the more than two decades. When Oprah sets her sights on you she pulls the most relevant details out of you as if there’s a string attached and one tug from her unleashes everything. She is a remarkable woman embarking on a remarkable journey.

When Ms. Winfrey made her way to me I told her I was a blogger. I’m thinking that I was the only one in the group who didn’t have a related career. She said to me, “So you just sit around and write all day?”

“No I can’t just sit around and write all day. I have to actually do something so I have something to write about. I never miss picking my kids up from school and I never miss tennis.” I explained.

Oprah’s head whipped around in search of Sherri Salata and she said, “Sherry do you hear this? She never misses a tennis lesson. I think we’re doing something wrong here.” And then she turned to look at me and said, “You don’t need LifeClass you’re living the dream.”

And I knew she was right, because I am living the dream. The adjusted dream. The dream where we live modestly and my husband loves me and I love him just a little bit more than that and the kids love us but we secretly know that we love them more than they could ever love us because that’s the secret all parents share.

That dream.

I had a question for her and she gave me an answer I think I’ll remember for for as long as I blog. I asked Oprah how she dealt with negative feedback. I started to explain that bloggers get a lot of grief in comments and on places like twitter and her answer stunned me.

Oprah Winfrey went to on talk in detail about a woman who was mean to hear on twitter. She mentioned her name, twice. She went on to talk a little bit about the solution and quoted her friend Maya Angelou:

No one can hold a candle to the light that God shines upon you.

I think I got that quote right. It was really quite beautiful when Oprah told it to me and what struck me was that with all of her success and millions of people saying, “Oprah you changed my life, you made me better, you made my life happier.” Ms. Winfrey would still remember the name of one detractor on twitter and this made me love her a little.

It reminded me how vulnerable we can all be. It reminded me as a parent that although I may congratulate Jane on her accomplishments the things that she may remember are the failures and the criticisms. When I talk to Alexander after baseball games I need to be more aware of the good plays because it’s clear that he remembers and replays the bad ones, he doesn’t need any help with that.

I spent the day Tuesday in New York City. I did the chazzerai tour of the Lower East Side picking up wasabi peanuts from Economy Candy, tees from Katz’ Deli (and a sandwich for myself), and bagels from Kossar’s. I stopped into Ross and Daughters but I couldn’t bring myself to schlep a smoked trout on the plane. In hindsight I could have, the flight was all Chasidim and I could smell deli food everywhere.

I went uptown and found a pair of shoes at Bergdorf’s and then headed across Fifth Avenue to grab Jane a little charm from Tiffany and Co. As I walked toward the third floor elevator a familiar voice said, “Jessica!” and we left Tiffany to have a snack and talk about our kids. It was my friend Jon who used to live in LA but now lives in one of the Carolinas (North I think?).

It’s totally normal to run into your friends 3,000 miles from home. Right?

I’m still digesting the messages of Oprah’s LifeClass. At the very moment it seemed totally irrelevant to my own life something would resonate deeply. I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything.

Earlier this week I got an email. Here is the exact text:

Hi!
Just letting you know that Jane volunteered for the 6:45-7:30 shift at the pancake breakfast.  If this is a problem, please let know!
I’ll leave the front gate popped open so people can get into the school.
See you then!

What am I supposed to say? Perhaps, “Listen if you want Jane on your doorstep before 7am may I suggest a sleepover at school?” Or maybe, “Sorry, that’s when we milk the cows.”?

After setting three alarm clocks last night I woke up late this morning. Clocks in my room and each of the kids’ rooms had failed. More likely I’d failed at setting them properly. At 6.05 Mr G tapped me awake whispering, “Don’t you have to get Jane to school early today?” I flew out of bed and woke the kids, threw my hair in a ponytail and got them to school on time. Cow milking time that is.

We had a nice breakfast with kids and parents from the school and I ran home to make myself presentable. I was home for 30 minutes and then ran to the school we’ve applied Alexander to for 6th grade.

There were a lot of parents there and only a few spots for admissions. The head of school gave a spiel and then there were questions. Lots and lots of questions from the parents. Most of the questions were about admissions and financial aid, which seemed weird and like a total waste of time because the applications were due months ago and acceptance letters will be mailed in a few weeks. Either you’ll get in or you won’t, either you’ll get financial aid or you won’t. I wanted to know more about the academics and I swear I almost dropped on one knee and proposed to the headmaster when he went on a tangent about self esteem being a crock of shit (my expletive not his) and went on to explain that kids need to be challenged but then you have to back off a little too. It’s like a dream come true and if Alexander doesn’t get in I think I’ll be crushed.

Conversely if Alexander does get in I think I’ll be petrified.

After the admissions event I had exactly 25 spare minutes to walk the dog and run to the LAPD. There’s a non profit that supports the LAPD traffic division and I was invited to one of their meetings. I thought it was weird that Alex invited me to attend and suggested I text him when I get there. I go to meetings all the time. I don’t need hand holding… I was wrong.

Luckily I parked my car and arrived at the same time as Alex because we walked in to a giant room of uniformed officers and a few detectives. To say I was intimidated is a gross understatement. I was having a pretty good hair day (my friend Jeannie asserts that our power lies in our hair) and I realized in that setting it didn’t make me look better but rather more hopelessly suburban. At least I’m out of the station wagon.

The meeting was interesting but brief. It’s scheduled to be two hours but I could only stay for one because I had to bring Alexander to the eye doctor for his two month post operative exam. The results were as I suspected, wait and watch, but probably another surgery. If I hadn’t have been so fucking tired I might have cried. So I guess I won’t punish Jane for volunteering at that ungodly hour.

We left the surgeon’s office, ran to get Jane from school, returned home for smoothies and homework (just 20 minutes of it mercifully) and then I ran kids to soccer and tennis. I’m home, hitting publish and then running to get my kids. They should be smelly and tired.

I know I am.