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Friendship Wars

Therapy Tuesday
Photo by: burgenschenker [ in slow motion ]

It starts off young. The moniker of "best friend." My 4-year-old is not immune to this, and while he has a stable "best friend," it can be hard to keep track of others that temporarily wear the label. At this early age, friendship is relatively simple: it is declared, and then honored by playing together during recess.

Sometime, around fourth or fifth grade, friendships change. There is an awareness of this concept called "popularity" and that begins to shift friend allegiances. Popularity, as we adults know, it something that is not ever real. I'm not speaking from insider information, but from what I've seen, those that are popular never feel comfortable with that status, as by its very nature, it can be fleeting. It is more a state of maintaining popularity rather than "being" popular.

Back to my 4-year-old, as he defines friendships as those that listen to him (and conversely do what he says) and those that don't. I overheard him playing with a friend recently, and he was instructing his friend around the rules of the game that he was making up. (The same rules would inevitably shift when the outcome wasn't what my son had in mind). I pulled him over and suggested that perhaps his friend might want to suggest a game for them to play. Without missing a beat, he said, "Hey, Ben, you should have us play a game that is like this..." And he proceeded to give detailed instructions.

I recently was talking to a parent who has a middle school aged daughter struggling with friendships. At this age, gossip is a powerful tool, as it can change relationships instantly. With the advent of texting and the internet, such news can be spread faster than one can imagine. The parent's struggle was with how involved should she be? Should she let the other parents know that her daughter has been advised to stay away from their girls? Is the onus on her daughter to set those boundaries?

As we age, friendships become more tricky, with more at stake. Friends contribute to our sense of happiness and well-being.

 

Political Lessons

Truth Thursday

(This post was written prior to the recent Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood debacle. I have since made a sizable contribution to Planned Parenthood, grateful for the reminder, by fellow blogger and Stirrup Queen, Melissa Ford, that it is important to support services instead of a quasi-philanthropic effort.)

A couple of weeks ago as my daughter and I were on a mundane errand, we drove past a large group of mostly young people streaming out of the metro and walking together towards the downtown area nearby. I couldn’t tell at first what was uniting them, except that they all seemed to be wearing orange scarves. And then I saw one of their placards.

“I’m pro-life and I’m proud.”

This was one of those car moments you read about in parenting manuals – when you are driving with your eyes on the road and you need to open a provocative yet important and potentially embarrassing topic with your child. Being behind the wheel so they don’t have to look you in the eye is the best possible place to start these conversations, I have now learned.

My 12-year-old daughter asked who these people were and why were they carrying signs?

I generally try very hard, when talking about big issues in the world, to offer a relatively neutral position so that my children can hear what are presumably the facts and try to make up their own minds about the topic at hand.

(The exception being the very basic birds and bees of politics – Democrats v. Republicans. My children know that they are simply never, ever allowed to become Republicans. They can become religious, they can come out, they can basically make any decision they want about how they choose to live their lives. But they cannot become Republican. No amount of funny Michael J. Fox as Alex Keaton will change my mind about this.)

Anyway, my daughter was probably preparing herself for another one of mom’s pablum-like homilies.

Not this time.

Be a Good Sport

Fatherhood Friday

With Superbowl Sunday around the corner it’s a good time to remind my wife how lucky she is.

I grew up a passionate, though not rabid, sports fan. My favorite sports were (and still are) baseball and hockey, with football and basketball a distant third and fourth.

I grew up in New York, but now live in the Midwest. This is important (in this context) for two reasons: first, since my favorite teams don’t play in the local market there is a limited number of occasions to watch them on television. Second, in the New York City area, professional sports were king, at least in the circles I traveled. We just didn’t really get into college sports.

What does this mean for me as a sports fan and husband today? I have plenty of friends who love – I mean love – football. College, professional, high school. It doesn’t matter. And when autumn comes around these guys seem to spend ten hours a day on Saturday watching college football and ten hours on Sunday watching professional football. When college basketball and the NBA come around the same thing occurs.

Since I don’t have an interest in college football and my NFL team is only on national television a few times a year, my wife knows that my weekends are not geared towards hanging in the man cave. Baseball, hockey – same thing, though spread out over the entire week.

In addition to that, I generally keep sports in perspective. If my team loses – even in the biggest of big games – I’m usually not thinking about it too much the next day. If I have to miss my favorite team on television I can survive. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. But I do try to keep it in perspective. Sports are entertainment, a diversion; not life.

Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate when proclaiming that these factors should make my wife feel lucky. In fact, it’s a two-way street. Because I don’t plan significant portions of my free time around sports, on those occasions that I do want to watch a game my wife recognizes the relative rarity of the event.  How our free time is spent during those hours almost never becomes a point of contention.

Every once in a while my awesome wife, who really isn’t in to sports at all, will make an effort to watch a game with me and try to engage. And while she may ask me what quarter the hockey game is in, how many runs the football team has scored or who’s winning while overtime is still being played, her willingness to participate makes me feel similar to the way I imagine she must feel every time I join her in watching a Reese Witherspoon or Kate Hudson movie: it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. What matters is that we’re doing it together.

(Photo Credit: http://thesportsfanjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/man-and-woman-watching-football-together.jpg)

 

The Interminable Waiting Game

Therapy Tuesday
Photo by: Dalo_pix2

I'm noticing that winter tends to be a season of waiting. Waiting for the weather to warm up or the days to get longer. Waiting for colleges to let you know if you should start making plans. Waiting for school to end and summer to begin.

I just got to experience waiting by proxy. The kind of waiting that I think is the most difficult of all: waiting for test results. The kind of waiting where you eagerly want the phone to ring, and simultaneously, are afraid of who might be on the other line. Waiting to hear "all clear," and yet being afraid to hope for that too much, less you jinx it (as if things actually work that way). What made this waiting a little more tough was that they weren't even MY results, but my mom's.

I got a call last week from my mom letting me know that at her doctor's appointment, there was a lump in her breast that was detected. Her doctor used a syringe to see if it was a cyst, and if it was, there would be liquid coming out. The syringe was inserted, but there wasn't any liquid. The next step was to get a biopsy. This would determine what kind of mass it was: benign or cancerous. I was able to be calm while on the phone, although I flashed back to my own waiting for results. I tried to mention this in a way to be in concert with her during this waiting. To protect myself from one of life's biggest fears (death), I wrapped some emotional distance from this news and put it "away."

Fast forward to Monday morning. I was getting my kids ready for the day, and the phone rings. It's my mom. I had forgotten that today was "Result Day" and I answered the phone. In an upbeat voice, I heard. "I just got the results back. Everything is fine. They are just going to monitor me." Three sweet phrases! As I was talking to her, I could feel my eyes well up with tears. The distanced emotion was raging full force! In that moment, I could feel what I almost lost. And I am grateful for this extra time found.

Just Like Mom Used to Make -- The Benefit of Baking Mixes and Easy One Dish Chili Dinner

 

Meal Monday

Let me begin by saying my mother is an excellent cook. And her mother was an excellent baker. But one key lesson I learned from them and from my own experience is that sometimes, a mix is better than scratch.  We already know that using prepared foods can save lots of time. I do think that in cooking, for the most part, making it yourself is almost always better -- though I have no problem with "homemade" being essentially an assemblage of store-bought ingredients. 

But when some guilt-inducing commercial comes on and waxes rhapsodic about something (usually cookies or pie or cake) that tastes just like "mom used to make," I have to laugh. My mother, for all her gourmet meals, always stocked cake mixes, brownie mixes and cans of frosting. And she came by that habit rightly. 

One afternoon, about 25 years ago, my cousin and I set aside several hours to spend time with my grandmother to learn how she made such delicious matzo balls. We were just learning how to cook and we were very excited about the tradition we'd be carrying on once we learned what went into this time-honored recipe. We put on our aprons, washed our hands and looked at her expectantly as we stood in her warm kitchen. 

"Okay," Nana said, "first, you pour the box of Manishewitz mix into the bowl." My cousin and I burst out laughing. Really? This was it? No big secret? How disappointing, and yet so liberating. The Great Matzo Ball Lesson took all of ten minutes. And the product was delicious. And I think of Nana every time I dump the matzo ball mix into the bowl. 

Shortly after my husband and I got married, and I was still looking for a job (read: had lots of extra time), I decided to make brownies. From scratch. Because of course, they'd be more authentic and better than brownies from a mix. The recipe was reasonably labor-intensive and involved a double boiler and a considerable amount of standing and stirring. I thought they were quite good, but the deflating comment from the Husband was "these are okay, but I like the ones from a mix better."

There you have it. Sometimes, not only does a mix save time and probably money, but the result is actually better. I say this for certain items only (see my pantry staples above). I mean, who would ever make fruit flavored gelatin dessert from scratch? Maybe someone, but not here. My 11-year-old son is quite the expert Jello maker.