And then there were three...

I’ve had a lump in my throat for the last four weeks.  I go through life looking and functioning like a normal person, but in reality I am Humpty Dumpty, precariously wobbling through the streets hoping that no one will bump my shell, because all of my guts will spill out, and it won’t be pretty.

I know in my brain that this is the normal way things are supposed to go.  Kids grow up, they study hard, they participate in way too many extra-curricular activities, and then they depart for college.  They don’t come back.  Isn’t this what we have been preparing for over the last 4 years?  Taking honors classes, suffering through standardized testing, pursuing multiple sports and volunteer opportunities?  Visiting campus after campus trying to locate the utopian place to continue his/her education?  If you’ve done your job, it is the model product launch, and all of the customers will want the perfect product you created and nurtured for the last 18 years.

My heart is a different matter.  My heart has moved to the top of my esophagus, waiting for the provocation that will send the tears into motion.   I’m afraid to turn on the TV because We are Marshall, Terms of Endearment, or even The Intern might come on, and my welled up fire hydrant of emotions will burst into the world, and let me tell you, it would take one really hot fireman to turn them off.

The college transition is like any other major life changing event:  it is too overwhelming to absorb on its own, so you distract yourself by engaging in the mandatory preparations.  Like preparing the nursery.  Or planning the wedding.  Or in this case packing a few “Take-a-ton” Samsonite lightweight duffle bags with a year’s worth of clothing, choosing the fixings to cozy up a stark dorm residence, and setting the record for trips to Staples.  You are racing around like an idiot PREPARING and before you know it, that awkward moment has come where you have to say goodbye to your firstborn.  There is so much to say that you end up saying nothing at all as you hold back your sobs and make a quick dash to the car.  From then on, he is let loose to make his own decisions, and you do not know where he is (2071 miles away according to Find My iPhone), what he is doing or who he is hanging out with, or if he is even still alive.  

I’m actually good with all of that, he either has the tools or he doesn’t at this point.  It is time for some real world testing; we are no longer in the beta phase.  It is me that I’m worried about.  I will miss the way he calls my name when he walks in the door, the way he leaves “droppings” around the house, how he shares one his inappropriate jokes from social media and can’t stop giggling, taking hikes together, going to movies, and the way he and his sister laugh together at the kitchen counter.  I’m also afraid for the complete tectonic shift in the family dynamic that is hard to predict, but I know is coming.  I calculate the quake to be somehwere around a 5.5 with reverberations felt far and wide.  There is a certain set of checks and balances in any family that is altered when a member leaves the nest.  When Blake is anxious, Mac takes him on a bike ride and he returns less stressed.  When Shaye is acting like a big shot, Mac puts her back in her place.  When I’m mad at the dogs, Mac makes fun of me and I forget how much they annoy me.  Of course, he wasn’t always the calming factor.  He could definitely do his share of instigating…

A friend recently recommended the book “Passages” to me.  Wait, isn’t that the book that was on my mother’s nightstand for like 10 years?  Is it still relevant?  Apparently a mother’s feelings haven’t changed much in the last 40 years – and how she deals with them hasn’t evolved either.   This is called being human; it isn’t something that can be fixed with new technology or some fancy medical device.  Matters of the heart are timeless.

On the positive side of things, I have less laundry, grocery shopping, food preparation, overall cleaning, and driving to do.  And most of all, he seems to be happy and enjoying his classes, professors, and new friends.  Which trumps all of my sadness in one fell swoop.

“Mom is Mad at Diplo”

(Quote from Shaye to Mac as I madly type away on my computer)

On my last two trips to Las Vegas I’ve been lucky (!?) enough to experience an odd pop culture experience: the Live overpaid DJ.  A couple of years ago we saw Dillon Francis and more recently, I didn’t make it to see Diplo, even though I waited impatiently for almost two hours for him to start his “concert”.

I have been to many concerts: hard rock, pop, acoustic, and jazz.  I don’t mind paying for tickets to these events, standing in line to get in, putting up with the opening acts which can be great, or mediocre.  When the lead musicians get on stage, there is an exciting, well-planned, musically sound, choreographed production that takes place.  There are lights, video, smoke, and sometimes fire.  I am excited to see the talents of many people come together to create a memorable and culturally impactful performance. 

In a hastily planned trip to Vegas, there were no other concerts around with the exception of someone named Diplo who would be the featured DJ at a nightclub at the Wynn called Surrender.  Even though I was less than impressed with my earlier experience with Dillon Francis a couple of years earlier, I decided to see what all the hype was about.

The best part of the story is that I am now mature (read: OLD) and slightly smarter, and have enough money to dine at the restaurant next to the club, which allows for VIP and free entry into the nightclub.  I didn’t have to wait in line in my 4” heels for over an hour to watch the amazing Diplo perform his show.  Because I didn’t have to pay or wait, my expectations were pretty low, but apparently not low enough.

We all clamber around a small stage with what appears to be a long podium of sorts with a series of computers and synthesizers with multifarious buttons.  There is a screen behind the podium, and another screen about 50 Ft in front for those of us who can’t get close to the stage.  The opening “act” stands there and pushes buttons, flips the volume dials with his two first fingers and bounces around a bit behind the podium, alternately removing and putting on his headphones.  Purpose?  IDK.  Occasionally he licks his fingers before touching the buttons/dials.  Better traction?  On the big screens, random photos of dancing animated pineapples and a strange cartoon mouse flit across.  Interspersed with these bizarre and unrelated images is the head of the infamous Diplo.  This goes on all night.  The same video over and over.  Every 5-10 minutes the opening DJ requests that we put our hands up and scream for Diplo.  “Great,” I think to myself, “the show is about to start!”   These requests to salute Diplo begin at about 11:45 pm.  We go to the bar and try to get some water because we don’t want to drink alcohol this late in the evening.  As it turns out, in Vegas where there are virtually no rules for anything else, you aren’t allowed to order “just” water.   As we hold our extraneous drinks, we do a lap and survey the crowd while waiting for Diplo to arrive.  We try to talk over the thumping noises created by the computer.  Occasionally, the DJ would actually play a song that had lyrics – for example from “The Weekend” and I would get excited, but in less than 10 seconds they would mix it with another digital sound.  No more weekend. 

Why does this all seem so pointless?  I look around for some clues as to my increasing intolerance and distress.  Several things reveal themselves to me.  First, I am the only one NOT wearing a sausage dress or high-wasted sausage skirt (I think the fashion term for this is a body-con dress).  Second, my husband and I are exotic creatures in this zoo.  Not only because we are fair skinned and haired, we are also twice the age of 99% of the people in da club.   Hmmm.

Again I am asked to raise my hands in the air and cheer for Dicklo.  WTF?  Where is this douche bag Diplo anyway.  What does he need so much time to prepare for; he is going to push buttons and move volume dials.  My daughter was adept at doing this at 2 years old.  It’s not like he is Mick Jagger who will be jumping around the stage and singing duets with the talented and oddly healthy Keith Richards.

But all of these young millenials with too much foreign money in their bank accounts, enjoying absurdly overpriced bottle service, are still waiting patiently for this Dipstick to appear and perform his digital symphonies.  Have I mentioned that this guy makes upwards of $400K per performance?  I don’t get it.  These kids are dancing to digitized noise; there is no singing, no instruments, and no lyrics.  There isn’t even a rhythm to dance to, just a computerized cacophony with monotonous weird cartoon figures and heads running across a screen.  I truly fear for this generation of over digitized twenty-somethings.

Finally, it is 1:30 AM.  Again, put your hands together and scream for Diplo, Dipfuck, Dipshit!!! 

He doesn’t appear. 

I now understand the aptly named club.  I SURRENDER.  I wave the white flag of age and ignorance as I part the crowd to exit this anti-climatic phenomenon and head to the high thread count linens of my hotel boudoir. 

This is what I missed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LNhHExuaIc

A letter to my son....

Dear Maco,

I was thinking back to our conversation yesterday and I wanted to share my thoughts with you.  I believe that some of this is our fault.  In our effort to help get you into a good college, we have reduced everything you are into a page full of accomplishments.  And in doing so, you feel like all you are meant to do is get awards, achieve good grades and test scores.  But that is far from the truth.  Maybe that is how things appear right now, as you are trying to package yourself up as something a college might want.  And because the application process is so limited, it is hard to do much else.  The system has encouraged this type of thinking and we all fell into it and I’m sorry that I did.  I know that I have projected my own college experience onto you, in that I always felt if I had done a little more, or had the right connections I could have gone to Georgetown, my “dream” school.  I want your dreams to come true, but sometimes the dreams we have are not always the ones that come true.  I have a wonderful life in a beautiful town with a great husband, kids I adore and the best friends in the world.  It didn’t matter where I went to school - I am still living a dream, just not the one I had when I was 18.   

Life is not about accomplishments or a good resume, or even a lot of money.  Life is about the connections you have with other people.  It is important to be emotional and to be yourself.  And to be vulnerable, even if that is painful.   Like I said, in order to find who you are, sometimes you need to look at who you were and where you came from. 

You have always been mature for your age, you’ve always engaged easily with adults, and they like you (sometimes more than kids your own age).  You were a beautiful baby and child and you are a handsome teenager.  You are smart and wise and thoughtful.  You are the little boy who wanted to save his mother from the “older” even if he didn’t know what older was.  You are the young man who put his arm around his mother during Sam’s service because she was crying.  You are the friend who stayed with Aidan when his ex-girlfriend was having a party and he was having a bad night.  You are the kid who made Nicole giggle time and again at our kitchen counter.  You are the brother who stayed to support his sister in her ski race even after he crashed in his own race.   You are the friend who has driven lots of drunken kids home from parties.  You are the son who made his dad a sculpture of his favorite tree.   You are the grandson who wrote a poem for his grandmother’s 70^th birthday in the back of a cramped ski team van.

These are the things that should be on your resume.  These are the things that colleges should care about.  These are the things that make you human, a good person, and ultimately successful in life.  You are so much more than a ski racer, or a student who got perfect grades.   You are a caring, passionate, curious, lovely teenager who is trying to navigate a complicated and uncertain future in the best way he knows how.   I am proud of everything you are, as well as everything you have done and I love you so much.  Mom

“A happy life is not made up of what you have dreamed of, chased after, and achieved, but rather whom you poured your life into, who poured their life into yours, and the difference you’ve made in the lives of others.”  Susan Meissner

The Home Office

It’s 1:00 pm on a Tuesday afternoon.  The dogs are laying on their backs on the Persian rug, legs splayed open in lazy, canine ecstasy.  Two computer screens are glowing not five feet from each other: one a giant, shiny, silver iMac, the other an old black HP.  My husband is in his jammies, focused on a rambling email.  I sit in the swivel office chair, the back of which touches his swivel office chair, facing my own screen filled with Quickbooks entries.  I too, am in my pajamas.  My second cup of tea sits half drunk next to my mouse.  This, my friends, is the grim landscape of the home office on any given day.

I remove my headphones and peruse the less than professional setting.  “This is pathetic”, I utter.

“Are you kidding?  This is the best” my husband responds while enthusiastically rubbing the dogs’ bellies.    “What are you making me for lunch?”

“I made two breakfasts and two lunches for my CHILDREN this morning, I’m not making lunch,” I reply with as much disdain as I can muster.

“Come sit on my lap then” he suggests casually (every day).

“Are we in an episode of Mad Men?  I’m complaining to HR, would you treat your colleagues this way?” I ask.  “And by the way, you are no Don Draper.”

“I am HR and you’re my wife, so it’s not illegal.  I checked with my lawyer.”   He says with what is supposed to be humorous finality.  

Unfortunately this is true, I have no one to blame but myself for my current predicament.  I even reached out to my brother-in-law, the silent voice of reason partner in our family business, to file a complaint.  He told me to go on a girls’ trip or go shopping.  I now realize I am in my own hellish episode of Mad Henderson Men, minus the continuous consumption of spirits and cigarettes.  Now that is a thought, a glass of scotch would make the day go quicker, but would probably lead to increased harassment. 

The cheerful bleep of the computer, indicating that my accounting entries have in fact reconciled, gives me a pitiful amount of satisfaction so I decide to take a break and throw in some laundry.  Another perk of working at home is the endless amount of multi-tasking that can be done. 

Let me fill you in on a little history so you can fully comprehend the change in lifestyle in which I’ve had to accustom myself.  When we got married, my husband traveled 70% of the time.  After grad school, when I worked in high tech, we both traveled a great deal.  After I had my son, we both worked but only he traveled.  After I had my daughter, and stopped working full time, he traveled around the world consistently, and would be away for 2-3 weeks at a time.  Even later, as he started his own business, he had a shared office space and I went to my part time job over the years.  I just ASSUMEd this was the way things would continue on in our relationship and our life.  As we all know, assuming gets us in trouble.  Now that we are both working in the family business and trying to do so economically, I find myself working in a space the size of cubicle with my sexually harassing, significant other/boss, but without even the benevolently intentioned, yet useless divider to give us privacy.

“Our” office features his side, which is a full wall of desk, with drawers, shelves, and files; it even has room for knick-knacks and photos.  His things are neatly stowed away.  My “side” of the office is a lone desk less than 36” wide with one drawer that is barely deep enough to hold my checkbook, and an archaic HP desktop dominating 30 of the 36 available inches of desk space.  Consequently, my shit is piled all over the desk, and the floor.  Because he is on the phone for at least 50% of the day, I usually move my shit to the dining table or kitchen counter so I can focus.  Then the kids get home from school, and their shit gets strewn all over the kitchen counter, dining and great room.  This creates a lively mess of everyone’s shit that is simply a joy to walk into.   

“Mom, can you move these architectural plans off the dining table so I can do my homework?”  my daughter grumbles.

“Can you guys be quiet and turn the music down?  I’m getting on a conference call,” my husband yells from “our” office.

“How long until dinner?” my son inquires casually. 

The dogs start whining and barking as their inner clocks tell them their evening feeding time is approaching. 

Calgon, High West, Don Draper, someone please take me away from the home office….