The Silent "I"

Home is Where the Heart Is

When I was in kindergarten, our teacher posed a question to our class of rambunctious five year olds: What is a home?  I recall many kids raising their hands, describing a house, a yard, a mom, a dad, maybe grandparents, a dog. One kid said, "where your toys are."  Another said, "A house you own."

I thought about the downstairs apartment where my family lived, my mom, my dad, my baby brothers and me.  We didn't own it; there was a landlord who came around to collect the rent and cut the grass. Our apartment was the entire downstairs of the old house, painted slate blue, with white windows and a dark red door. My mom was always there, it seemed, since she didn't know how to drive.  My dad wasn't always there with us, since his job as a trucker had him out on the road for days at a time.

There was an elderly lady who lived upstairs in one apartment. She would take me on excursions downtown to buy nylons at the local dress shop. The two of us would stop in a diner afterwards, where she bought me  pineapple sundaes and gave me a nickel for helping her decide which color stockings to buy, though there really wasn't much choice, since I really couldn't tell the difference between "nude" and "taupe". She smelled like vanilla and wore headscarves tied neatly below her chin.

In the apartment next to hers lived a young couple, barely out of their teens. The young wife would play Bobby Darrin and the Beatles 45s while we baked cookies together and danced around in her living room. I thought she was terribly sophisticated. She showed me pictures of Paris in a scrapbook, and told me it was her dream to go there someday.

Was this a home? I thought to myself.  My family and these two strangers above us? Then, it hit me.  I shyly raised my hand.  "A home is where the people who love you are."

I remember the teacher beaming down at me. "That's right," she said. "Home is where love is."

She drew a house on the board, with a big heart in the middle of it. For a moment, all the kids got quiet, as though they had to think long and hard about that, before commencing their normal routine of eating paste and toppling over blocks.  Looking back, that seemed a little abstract for five year olds.

I've lived in a number of places in my life. From that apartment house in Middletown, Ohio, to my parents fulfillment of the American dream, a three bedroom tract house in the suburbs of Dayton. As an adult, I've lived in dorm rooms and shared apartments in New York and Chicago. In Austin, Texas, I shared a house with my brothers' rock and roll band, aptly named "Sourlawn", then rented a small house on a dead end street where I could hear freight trains rumble by in the middle of the night. Frank and I lived in a big house with a pool overlooking the Austin skyline for a time, then moved west to California and a tiny corporate apartment.  We've made our home in a modest townhome in Palo Alto since then, full of paper and books and artifacts of our travels.

I remember all of these places fondly, with all the laughter and tears, joy and heartache that comes along with life.  I have been proud to call these places home, whether I lived alone or with family or friends or total strangers at times. I was thinking about these places recently and was reminded of one of my favorite songs, by singer-songwriter Sally Fingerett.  Her message is about tolerance and understanding of families of all kinds, and the refrain is:

Home is where the heart is
No matter how the heart lives
Inside your heart where love is
That's where you've got to make yourself
At home

I have boxes and piles and scrapbooks full of photos of the places I've lived. I have a few pictures of the houses and apartments, but mostly, the pictures are of people.  Even so, there are some images that are missing and reside in my memory alone.  I sometimes wish that I had better records of the places I have called home over the years, more photos or recordings, but I will have to make due with what I have, and the knowledge that wherever I go, as long as I'm with people I love, I will always be at home.

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 If you have oldThank you to LiveOn for sponsoring this blog post. Please LiveOn to learn more about sharing and preserving your most important memories. I was selected for this sponsorship by Clever Girls Collective. Although story ideas were provided, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

"Spring Awakening" Opens in San Jose

A little bit of magic Broadway found its way to San Jose this week, with the opening of the Broadway hit Spring Awakening at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts. Armed with a charming and dynamic young cast, a pop-rock score, and lively dance numbers, this 8-time Tony award winner is sure to be a hit with teens and young adults. 

The cast, capably led by Christy Altomare as Wendla, Jake Epstein as Melchior, and Taylor Trensch as Moritz, tell the story of teens in 19th Century Germany exploring their budding sexuality.  At turns comedic and tragic, the emotions are amplified by an indie-rock score using a modern vernacular, making it more like "Rent" than an Andrew Lloyd Weber period piece.  It's quirky, creative, and fun, with serious cautionary messages for teens and adults.  I enjoyed the piece overall, and think it is one that parents could use as a lynch pin for serious discussions about sex, suicide, sexual abuse, and abortion.  I don't recommend this for kids under 14, due to the mature themes, brief nudity, and strong language. 

To me, the standouts in the cast were Steffi D as Ilse, a troubled girl who runs away from sexual abuse at home.  Steffi has a wonderful, emotive voice, perfect for ballads and rock numbers alike.  I also enjoyed watching Andy Mientus as Hanschen, whose oily, brazen seduction of an innocent classmate, Ernst, was a scene-stealing moment.  My husband thought he looked like Spike from Buffy the Vampire, and with his white-blond hair and swagger, I thought that was a fair comparison.

Where the show fell down for me was in the story line.  Based on an 1891 play by Frank Wedekind that was banned for nearly 100 years, due to it's treatment of issues like homosexuality, teen suicide, and abortion.  It seemed as though someone sat down with a laundry list of horrific events that could befall a teen and stitched them together into a loose storyline. 

While the first act is all about discovery and confusion, my husband noted that the second act could have been called "Rude Awakening."  The second half of the play seemed to reinforce nothing good can come of sex, including death, despair, and reform school.  There didn't seem to be any sense of redemption or reconciliation, though the closing number talks of hope of rebirth and regeneration.  I don't think the story naturally led to that conclusion.

I was also not thrilled with the reinforcement of the notion that all adults are the same, depicted literally by having every adult role played by the same man and woman. The adult characters seemed uniformly oblivious and unsympathetic to what the kids were going through, whether they were parents, teachers, or clergy.  I can definitely see that from a child's perspective, that might appear to be true.  I can understand why this show has such a large teen following, particularly for kids who feel marginalized or that their parents just don't understand the pressures they feel. 

Our town recently been rocked by a serious of very public and painful teen suicides that has ripped the fabric of our community.  It was particularly timely and poignant to watch this played out on stage, and the music seemed to be very much on point, particularly in showing the anger that kids feel that no matter what they do, as the song says, they're "totally f*cked".  I hope if nothing else, this should could open a frank dialogue between teens and their parents.

Spring Awakening is part of a national tour that runs through Sunday, November 1 at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts. For tickets, click here.  For information on other cities and dates, check out the Spring Awakening tour website.

PHOTO 1: (l-r) Kimiko Glenn, Gabrielle Garza, Christy Altomare, and Sarah Hunt.

PHOTO 2: Steffi D. as Ilse

Photo Credit: Paul Kolnik. Photos used with permission of Carla Befera Public Relations.

Disclosure: I received two complimentary media passes to attend the show, but no other compensation for this review. Opinions expressed herein are solely mine.

World Breastfeeding Week

This past week was World Breastfeeding Week, but I've been so caught up in work, planning a birthday party, and recovering from my last round of illness that I almost let it go by without mention. I received a couple of interesting press releases and information on this topic that I wanted to share here.  The first was this interview clip from Julie Menin's Give and Take.  In this clip from the interview series, CNN host Campbell Brown talks about motherhood, work-life balance, and looking for role models for working moms.  One particularly resonant anecdote is the one she tells about pumping, and express mailing breastmilk to her husband when she moderated a Presidential Debate. The full interview can be seen in four parts at Julie Menin's website, and will air on select cable channels.

I also received information from a marketing program aimed at increasing awareness by giving out information and breast-feeding friendly supplies as new moms are discharged from the hospital.  When Alex was born 9 years ago, I got not one but two diaper bags from the hospital chock full of...formula.  I thought it was a nice gift, but I was set on breastfeeding.  The only information on breastfeeding I got was some strong encouragement from the nurses and an instruction to watch a video.  Several painful, exhausting weeks later, I threw up my hands and went to see a lactation consultant, but felt like an utter failure.  Eventually, I figured out how to do it without making my toes curl from the pain, but it would have been helpful to have some additional information and supplies.

This has been the norm for a number of years now, so I was pleased to see that an alternative is now available.  The breastfeeding-friendly version of the discharge bag is called the Healthy Baby Bounty Bag.  Starting this month, the bag will be distributed in approximately 200 hospitals across the country, to about 300,000 new moms.  The bag contains milk storage bags, disposable nipple pads, samples, coupons, and information on breastfeeding.  The bags are sponsored by Lansinoh, makers of a lanolin cream that I could not live without when Alex was an infant.

I asked if this would be available at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, our local hospital, but unfortunately, it is not.  This might be a good project for our local Palo Alto & Menlo Park Parents' Club to take on.  I hope these bags will help other moms ease into breastfeeding a little smoother than I did.

 

 

Medicare Part D: What You & Your Parents Should Know

Thanks to the Parent Bloggers Network, I had the opportunity to be on a conference call last week with Mike Freeman of the Healthcare Leadership Council on Medicare Part D.  Medicare Part D is the federally-funded prescription drug program for senior citizens, and something my parents complain about bitterly to me nearly every time they call me.  I wanted to hear what the experts had to say about this topic, so that I could help my parents find their way through the bureaucracy and establish a plan that is right for them.  I'm glad I took the time to listen in and ask questions.

The main purpose of the call what to get the word out that the period for seniors and disabled people to sign up for Medicare Part D (their form of "open enrollment") is November 15-December 31.  Mike encouraged those of us on the call to help spread the word about this benefit, which is somewhat underutilized.  He also said that healthcare plans change, so some people who might not have needed the benefit last year should look into it.

Medicare has a handy "plan formulary finder" on their website at www.medicare.gov.  Seniors fill in the medications they are taking, the state they live in, and the site allows them to find plans that can best suit their needs.  For seniors who don't have computer access, they can call 1-800-MEDICARE to speak to someone.  They should have a list of their drugs available so that the representative has all of the information they need to find the appropriate plan for them.