Summer Seductions

Lake Harriet Bandshell on a quiet summer afternoon.

We’re in the midst of one of the most glorious summers imaginable.

A side note here: Most Minnesotans would never write the sentence above because we’re superstitious about our weather. Saying the weather is glorious could jinx the whole thing. The weather might hear, you know, and then it can all change in a snap.

This summer, however, deserves a shout out.

So far – and we have passed the halfway mark of the three month season – we’ve experienced the ideal mix of sun, heat, and rain to produce bumper crops of tomatoes in the back yard and farmer’s markets abundant with stunning greens. We’ve experienced the warm humid embrace of afternoons demanding time with a book on the porch where the ceiling fan creates the idea of a breeze. And we’ve experienced the roll of booming thunder from driving storms that wash away the humidity and leave clear blue mornings.

This perfect sequence of sun, heat, humidity, then storms has minimized any need to drag out the hose for watering duties this year. It makes one grateful for the mother of nature and those higher, greater powers watching out for this planet.

When the humidity, sun, and heat are just right, cities on the North Coast empty out as anyone with a cabin or friends Up North head to the lakes to admire the buoyancy and sweet cooling impact of an inner tube on water. And that leaves the cities to us.

We live between two of the loveliest lakes in Minneapolis – Calhoun is two blocks north with its volleyball nets and dueling beaches at each end. It’s the younger, hipper of the lakes. It’s where the motorcyclists like to show off their rides in a long line of bikes parked side by side to emphasize the differences of their lines. The elegant Somalis in ankle-length sarongs stroll around the lake next to teens in bikinis and older men carrying fishing poles to the docks, hoping the big fish that lounge in the depths come up for just one bite.

To the east is Lake Harriett featuring a band shell angled just so that the music wafts to our porch for evening concerts that are usually pleasing from here. When the music is exceptional, we find ourselves drawn to join the crowd at the lake where we enjoy the shared camaraderie that performers can create in an appreciative audience. And every now and then – twice so far this year – the smell of food from the adjacent grill draw us over for a scoop of ice cream.

I know this season will pass into the next and become a mere memory so we’ll continue to relish the seductive pleasures of this summer on the North Coast and appreciate the warmth while it’s here.

Trendy in Silver

It happened just the other day at dinner. A friend, looking at her phone as happens all too often, made one of those spontaneous sounds.

“Ughch!” came blurting out. “Why would they do that?”

“Why what?” I asked.

“These young girls – they’re dying their hair white. Why would they try to make themselves look old?”

And that’s when she looked up and remembered that she was talking to me – the woman sporting a mop of white hair. I am that one friend of hers who simply got bored with my hair guy and decided to give my natural white a go.

It seemed the only good option was to laugh at the look on her face.

“Well, it appears I’ve become trendy after all, if this is what the young girls are doing.”

Of course, it has taken years for white hair to become trendy.

My hair started its shift sometime in my 30s. It’s easy to blame the arrival of the kids – hormones, stress, sleepless nights, all that. But it’s probably more of a genetic thing. People who can trace their heritage to the northern parts of Europe just go white earlier than others.

I didn’t notice at first. I was paying to have my hair highlighted every other month, and just thought the hairdresser was doing a better and better job with the highlights. That was, until he mentioned it might be time to add other shades to my excessively highlighted head.

I was mortified. White hair? I was only 35. How could this be?

So we doubled down and coloring became part of my annual budget. It started with an appointment every six weeks, then every four. When I started noticing The Grey Gap after three weeks, I knew I was in trouble. Actually, it was when my administrative manager told me she wouldn’t cancel my hair appointment so that I could attend an important meeting because “the white in your hair is out of control.”

That’s when I realized something needed to change. Fifteen years ago that was a radical position. Most of the women I knew were not going to “look old” by letting their hair go “natural” which meant a color anywhere from steel grey to pure snow white.

Risking scorn, I started with my hair guy.

 “I’m going to stop coloring my hair,” I announced and watched as his face moved from disbelief to near shock.

“What do you mean you’re going to stop coloring your hair?  Don’t you want to look young? You mean you’re going to stop coming in?”

I realized what I was telling him was going to be a significant financial blow to his business since I had been a good and loyal and highly regular customer for years.

“Well, I think I’m going to need your help to transition through what was to what will be, so I’ll see you several more times until I get there…,” I trailed off.

His look of shock was causing me to rethink my new-look resolve. Was I doing the right thing? Would I regret the change, and would I then be able to change it all back again without too much damage to my image?

That’s when I just went to my Zen place, calmed down, and realized I was ready for the change. I calmly explained that I was going down this path and that I really wanted him to help me make the change. His look of shock shifted to one of acceptance or resignation and we got to work.

It turns out that shifting from full color to no color takes work and is not a seamless process. There is literally a seam running along your hairline no matter how talented the colorist until finally, finally your natural hair color has grown long enough to hack off the remnants of the faded colored bits.

I did experience an awkwardly mortifying moment with a group of colleagues when one stopped mid-sentence, stared at my head, and said, “What exactly is going on with your hair, Mary?” as she waved her hands in a circular motion pointing at my head.

With audible gasps and startled eyes pointing at me, I found enough oxygen to smile and say, “Transitions aren’t easy, are they?”

And now, here we are. Gray is trendy. White is a statement. And I’m right at the forefront of the look – love it when things finally come around.

Wish I'd Known...

C.difficile colonies - something you don't want too much of in your gut. Thanks to Wikipedia.

I love science. I really do. I love the pursuit of new knowledge, the asking of the questions, and the deep curiosity at the base of it all.

What if?

I wonder why?

How does this work?

And I truly am grateful to have lived long enough to now know what I wish I’d known before. I mean who knew that those wonderfully cleansing antibiotic soaps would one day be seen as contributing to antibiotic resistance? Or that the amazing productivity and yields coming from today’s American agriculture due to new chemicals and seed strains may be coming at the expense of human health and vitality?

Our mothers believed the advertising – that smoking was good for you, so how were they supposed to know that smoking and drinking during pregnancy was a two person pursuit that was particularly bad for the one growing inside?

There’s the conundrum. We know what we know based on the current knowledge available to us. And I’m convinced that science is pursued with the best of intents – but rarely with a complete understanding of the unintended consequences resulting from those intents.

The intent was cleanliness and sanitary surfaces with antibiotic soaps. Who could have predicted that too clean could be a problem – that we needed some of those bacteria in our lives? And, ok, I’m not going to presume that tobacco had any intent other than increased sales, but I do believe early on even the companies had no idea how addictive and deadly their product proved to be.

So the point of all of this is to say, “Sorry, kids.” 

Recent studies and articles now show that antibiotic use in very young children can transform the good bacteria living in the gut, leading to struggles with obesity, and metabolism – or energy/fatigue. And these are long-term impacts.

Long after the ear infections and sore throats are gone, the gut flora and fauna are altered without announcing the change in any perceptible way other than a tendency to put on weight easily.

My children were young in the late 1980s, before the words “epigenetics” or “gut genome” were thrown around in conversation. When my kids got sick, we went to the doctor, where we commonly heard, “Well, I’ll give you this antibiotic which may not help, but it certainly won’t hurt.”

It was a comforting idea that, as parents, we were doing something for our feverish, sick kids. And it was wrong.

I don’t blame the pediatricians and family practice docs for not being microbial scientists. They, too, were doing what they thought best.

What I’ve learned is that all science, all new knowledge needs to be recognized for what it is. It’s the latest, the most recent best knowledge. It’s part of the progression of unraveling this marvelous experience of life on this planet. But it’s not final. It will never be final.

So I propose that all science – all new knowledge – come with a warning label that says, “Don’t blame your parents. They didn’t know better because we just learned this ourselves.”

Unpacking With Care

Writing retreat in the woods of Wade's cabin estate. Photo courtesy of Gary Edwards.

We just arrived home after a seven-day driving trip around the upper Midwest that was filled with so many meaningful moments it is going to require some very careful unpacking.

This type of unpacking has nothing to do with the clothes in my suitcase.  I have developed a habit in the past decade of completing that chore the minute I arrive home. Suitcase emptied and returned to the closet, laundry begun, toiletries back where they belong before I finally sit down to check the pile of accumulated mail.

I’ve learned that if I don’t power through the unpacking it can languish for days as an unfinished annoyance at the back of my mind. At this stage of life, I don’t have enough room in my mind for unfinished annoyances any more.

This other type of non-suitcase unpacking is something I started doing after I turned fifty more than just a few years ago. It was at that point in my one-way journey through life that I realized I was so breathlessly jumping from trips to events to dinner parties and on to the next that I was missing the richness of the details of it all.

Jacques would say, “Do you remember that wonderful evening in New York when we….?”

And I’d have to pause and sort through overstuffed mental file cabinets while seeking additional clues.

“Was it the trip in July or the trip in October?”

“Did we have dinner with Julie or were we alone?”

“Was it cold or rainy that night?”

And responses to each of those prompts would help me narrow down the memory to the one he wanted to share until finally, I could say, “Yes! I actually do remember that evening.”

Then and only then could we talk about the shared memory of a long walk with surprise discoveries that were topped off by an outstanding and unplanned meal.

The whole exercise of sorting through the clutter of full rich memories shoved with little thought into the virtual storage cabinet of life experience needed an overhaul. I needed some sort of feng shui, zen practice to create order out of my lovely mass of experiential recollections. I realized there was little I could do about the mess of the deep past, but I could begin a new practice moving forward to help with the recall tasks of the future.

And that’s how it began – the mental unpacking practice I now find so wonderful. It is somewhat like organizing a scrapbook of photos and knickknacks to physically document highlights of the passage of time. Only this organizing, or careful unpacking, all takes place in my mind.

I’ll show you what I mean.

On this past trip, I attended my second annual writer’s retreat at the cabin estate of author Wade Rouse. I unpack the experience by remembering how wet it was when Jacques dropped me at the door, the dampness of the woods dripping from the trees and lush flowers. But oh, the smell of warm welcome that was on the inside. Gary Edwards, Wade’s domestically talented partner had anticipated our every desire for nurture. Coffee and tea were ready, along with labeled containers for various forms of cream.

The smells from the kitchen came from gorgeous egg bakes and beautiful coffee cakes. Although we were a challenging bunch this year requiring dairy and gluten-free options, Gary’s response showed his creativity and flare. And – oh my – the nurturing details of the cabin estate in the woods – scented candles punctuating the smell of fresh flowers in vases on all surfaces, napkins wherever food was present, and tissues waiting for a tear.  

I remember searching the faces for the dear familiar smiles and take time to think about the sparkle of eyes, the curve of cheeks, and the words spoken in greeting. And I think through first impressions of those I met for the first time. There were only eleven of us, so it doesn’t take long to work through the newly dear faces and to add them to the now familiar family of the Society of Wade’s Writers.

There is the look of contained fear in the eyes of the new attendees as they realize they actually will be expected to read their own work out loud in front of us at some point over the weekend. Horrors! And that is matched by the look of eager anticipation of those who have experienced the sacred safety of this group who want the gentle helpful feedback from fellow writers.

The writing itself is the power memory. Stories that tell of failed parenting mix with those of beloved, almost supernatural animal partners. Chevys at levees with good old boys drinking whiskey and rye are blended with the shock and horror of lower Manhattan on September 12, 2001. Fiction that draws on life experiences with love and rejection, remarkable dialogue that sparkles with authenticity, and the heart filled description of the power of a first kiss. And the raw voices of relationship pain punctuated with well-placed “fucks” demonstrate the power of that noun/verb/adjective/exclamation.

Memory secure, I can move to unpacking the last 48 hours of driving that included a quick visit to the old hometown. The magnetic draw was one of the most perfect babies ever – my great nephew Nash Alleshouse – with his shock of black spikey hair and cherubic cheeks. His parents are appropriately in love with their firstborn and there are doting grandparents and relatives surrounding them to provide the all-important support during that first year without an instruction manual.

After an all-too-quick visit with dear lifelong friends – and a great Reuben sandwich – we were back on the road through rainstorms that…

Well, never mind. That is the beauty of the unpacking exercise.  I don’t have to unpack memories I don’t need to remember. Why clutter the future with any recollection of barely visible highways behind huge trucks spewing spray? 

Planting a Tree

Our newest tree, a Northern catalpa on the corner of W. 40th and Sheridan Ave. S. in Minneapolis.

We planted a tree yesterday. Of course, when I say “we” I mean the guys at the tree service came to plant our tree for us. Trees are simply too important to leave to the amateur skills of homeowners like us.

It’s a Northern Catalpa, a hardy sort for a climate like Minnesota’s, yet also a pretty tree with elephant ear-like leaves that wave peacefully in the breeze.   When it grows beyond its stick-ly present, it will sprout big showy white flowers and produce dangling seedpods – the fun kind that make great rattling sounds when dried.

Trees are a big deal in Minnesota, so much so that the city of Minneapolis offers up trees to homeowners each spring for a nominal fee, as long as we pick them up and cart them home. It makes for a weekend spectacle of cars and vans sprouting stems and leaves driving away from the tree lot. But Minnesota’s Tree Trust achieves its goal of maintaining the urban tree canopy by sending out saplings into the community.

We planted our new tree near the empty space where a big old maple used to stand. When the kids were little, that maple and its pair, the remaining oak tree, were the perfect distance for tying up a badminton net for games in the front yard. 

We weren’t living here when the maple came down. It had finally succumbed to a very windy thunderstorm and dropped another large branch of its awning onto the sidewalk. The tree guys let us know it wasn’t strong enough to withstand another big storm and was at risk of breaking nearly in half, so we thought it wise to protect passersby by saying goodbye to the tree.

Frankly, I’m glad we weren’t here when it came down. Trees are so miraculous in all they provide and that tree had memories associated with it. Its shade cooled the front yard from the heat and humidity of summer. It was a hiding place when the kids were little and the “go seek” part didn’t require serious hiding. And its role in lawn games was important, providing an imaginary line for soccer balls and goals with the oak.

When we came home this spring, it was odd to see that open space on the lawn where the maple had once stood. There was a yawning space of sunshine where shade once reined.

So it’s not a surprise that we planted the catalpa near the site of the former maple. We want to ensure future generations have the option to tie up a net or plot a goal line in the front yard. And there’s something wonderful about charting time through the growth of a tree.

We’ll remember we planted it in the spring of 2015, and as it grows and matures we’ll recall this summer of transition and homecoming. In a few years, we’ll laugh about the Charlie Brown tree we planted and marvel at its growth. And when we finally downsize to a place by the river, we’ll drive by the old neighborhood to check up on our towering catalpa on the corner. 

Fashion Forward ...

Photo by blogger Ari Seth Cohen, of AdvancedStyle

I’ve always loved color and design and symmetry and asymmetry, and for a brief moment in time I was convinced I would pursue a career in fashion because of that.  If you know my closet – or the various shades of black that it holds – you would laugh at that notion today, but yes, it’s true that I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was 12 or 13. 

When I was in high school, I even told my somewhat ambitious parents that I wanted to go into design and become a fashion designer in New York, and to their credit neither laughed out loud in front of me. Instead, they actually scheduled a visit to a school located in Coral Gables, Florida that I had found in the back of a teen magazine.

I’m pretty sure my mom had called ahead to the admissions advisor to tell her there was no way a daughter of hers would be attending a “trade school” like theirs.  When we walked into the poor woman’s office, she looked at all of us and then, directing her face to me, said, “You don’t belong here. You should go to a 4-year university.”

So much for that career dream – it was off to Wake Forest and a degree in the philosophy of politics, which was a different kind of impractical.

Despite that crushing blow, I’ve always loved texture and style and fashion– not necessarily high fashion – all kinds of fashion. I even appreciated the laid back “I don’t give a flip” style of my mother who proudly wore mismatched chartreuse and pink knee socks that rumpled around her ankles in her orthopedic shoes.

It takes a certain Je ne sais quoi to pull that off.

What I really appreciate about clothes and fashion is the range of choices and options available on any given day, which is why I’m always so baffled that perfectly smart people get sucked into ridiculous trends when there is a world of alternatives out there.

The latest is the return of culottes. They were a bad look the first time they came around in the late 1970s. We all tried to wear them. They seemed so convenient – pants that looked like a skirt – sort of. But wow they were unflattering on all of us. It was just too much fabric in all the wrong places.

We wear skirts because of the great lines – and we wear pants or slacks for the comfort…although hopefully the great lines are still there. But culottes?

Well fortunately the old maxim applies – if you are old enough to have worn the style the first time it came around, you’re probably too old for the second run. So I’m free and clear on this trend.

And then there’s the unintentional lemming thing.

I recently bought a pair of jeans that have those rolled up cuffs because my daughter said, “Actually, Mom, they look good on you.”

I could have done without the “actually”, but yes, they are decent.

Then I went to the movie theater and right in front of me were three young women with nearly identical rolled up jeans all standing in a row, and each was wearing similar short tan boots and I realized I’d fallen into the lemming trap. Each of them was proudly posing as if to say “Look at my unique style.”

And there we have it; the curious American desire, no need, to be unique – by wearing clothes that are styled just like everyone else.

It might be time for me to pull out my mismatched socks.

Set Back On My Heels

From a quieter protest in Minneapolis earlier this year, by Avi Nahum.

A friend asked the other day why she hadn’t read anything new in this blog lately. And I realized I was still wrapped around an axle over the emotions I was struggling to name following the events in Baltimore late last month.

I realize that the time span involved in saying “late last month” is ancient history in this micro news cycle era driving our ever-diminishing attention spans. But something about those events set me back on my heels.

It was the images from Baltimore that did it. Frustrated young men hurling objects and shouting out their anger at all of those forces that have led them to the lives they’re now living – being born into poverty or neglect, inadequate community support structures, and a series of choices that are one bad over another. 

Yes, we’ve seen those images in other places in the last year and continue to see them, but Baltimore is different than other places. I have spent time in Baltimore. I have friends in Baltimore. With Baltimore, it became personal.

And the images of Toya Graham pulling her son from a group of masked teenagers really brought it home.

If you missed that moment, go find it on Google. Just type in “the mom who pulled her son from Baltimore riots” and the stories pop up. Every now and again, television cameras focus on images that go beyond the story they think they’re telling. This was one of those times.

When Toya Graham recognizes her son among a group that is shouting and throwing rocks – despite his hooded sweatshirt and mask – she runs to him, grabbing his arm and walloping him across his head.

I don’t use the word wallop very often, but there really is no other way to describe the action of that moment.

The maternally protective fierceness of those images is what set me back on my heels. There is something primal and visceral about Toya Graham’s desire to pull her son back from the edge of that crowd of anger. She knows, in a way I can only imagine, that her son’s actions put him in grave danger, and she runs into the middle of angry frustration to pull him away and keep him safe.

It didn’t take long in our instantly connected world of images to identify the mother and son in the video, and their moments of media attention began.  Her son, Michael, is an articulate young man who may have needed that wallop to realize at that moment that he had a mother who would fight for him.

In Toya’s words, “That’s my only son and at the end of the day, I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray. But to stand up there and vandalize police officers, that’s not justice. I’m a single mom and I have six children and I just choose not to live like that no more, and I don’t want that for him.”

That’s the expression of a universal maternal instinct that reaches across geography and race. I believe we all want our children to understand the principles of justice and to live in a society that is just. What is so striking to me is that Toya Graham expresses that as I would, despite the fact she’s raising her child in a society that has a different form of justice for her son than I see for mine.

It’s hard for me to even imagine my son being in danger from over-reacting police officers. He’s generally respectful and has learned that the police are there to be helpful overall.

But I’m not raising a black son. That’s what has me wrestling over this issue. I can’t get my arms around the deep anxiety of that role. How can the maternal instincts of motherhood be both so universally understandable and yet so diametrically different in American society of 2015?

I simply don’t worry about my son or my daughter and their interactions with police officers. In the middle-America of their childhood on the North Coast of this country, our experiences with officers were fair and just.

Yet I also know that today, a black mother in America is giving birth to a son that she knows in her heart is in grave danger of not surviving to adulthood based on the very same interactions. I just don’t know what I can do to change that – thoughts, friends?

Words Matter

Yesterday, in case you missed it, Robert Downey Jr. walked out of a TV interview that was supposed to be about the new Avengers movie and instead, took an awkward political turn.

You would only know about it if you visited the rabbit hole of social media during the part of the day when it was trending – regardless, it was RDJ’s response to a bizarre question leading up to The Walk Out that I found so intriguing.

The entertainment reporter asked if Robert Downey Jr. considered himself to be a liberal, or more liberal now that he was five years ago, and RDJ responded by saying, “I’m not even sure I know what that word means.”

He’s right, you know. I’m not sure words like liberal and conservative and progressive and traditional are anything more than epithets or maligned labels at this point in our political history.

It’s too bad because my experience with the 3000 or so real people in my life leads me to believe that most are some combination of liberal conservatives, or conservative liberals.

Most believe in ensuring individual liberties – a core value of our country – and that makes them liberals.

And most believe in the traditional American values we were brought up with, like the importance of working hard, taking care of family and community, and demonstrating self-discipline – making them conservatives as well.

Most people I know are open to new ideas, believing in progress brought about by science and discovery. We’re grateful to live in an era when we’ve figured out indoor plumbing for our cities, power grids that supply heat and light, and surgical and pharmaceutical treatments and cures for conditions that killed our ancestors. That makes them progressives as well.

So we’re a complex mix of liberal progressive conservatism at a time when our media is seeking simple. We have entertainment reporters seeking a scoop of sorts by trying to affix a simplistic sound bite political label to a celebrity who is now using his fame to give back in wonderful ways – did you see that video of RDJ as IronMan with the child who received a 3D printed IronMan arm? Precious.

The point is that we’re entering the two-year presidential election cycle with reporters intent on using words as labels to divide us into artificial segments.

We’re more complicated than that. The issues – the problems we face as a nation and a globe are complex and nuanced and require solutions that are not black and white. For example, I just don’t believe there is only one right way to ensure young Somali men living in Minneapolis see a future of meaning, and thereby reject the grainy video images of an ISIS imam promising a greater purpose for their lives by joining jihad. 

That means we Americans who care about the future need to reject simplistic labels and start defining ourselves by finding the true meaning behind words that have become trite epithets. As a progressively conservative liberal, I intend to stand up for the right to be complicated in my political views and I support Robert Downey Jr.’s decision to walk out on trite.