Pancakes and Christine Colby

Today I made pancakes. Lots of small, dollar-sized pancakes. And today I served them to my seven-year-old daughter and her friend who slept over last night. Shea and Julia, today, are the same age I was when I would wake to a hundred tiny, dollar-sized pancakes and bacon, and being the same age, we ate them all.

Today, I served up those same pancakes without the bacon (Shea has been a self-proclaimed vegetarian since the age of three). Today I became Christine Colby and I couldn't have been happier.

You know those moments in your life when you stop and look at yourself as if from the outside and realize you had become the people you had looked up to for so long. The first realization came during my first year teaching at Santa Ana High School. Being barely older than the students themselves, I often felt like I was playing dress-up wearing business suits to try to hide my youthful appearance. I had been chased out of the office a time or two because someone thought I was still a student. During the first test I gave, while my students were working hard, while I was walking around the classroom to try to catch the cheaters, I had a moment to realize what had happened.

Without me knowing it and without really ever planning on it, I had become a teacher. I was the one who held their grades in my hand, who they had to try to fool to get away with their cheating, the one who a few of them looked up to as knowing everything in the world about science (little did they know I had never taken an earth science class in my life.)

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I wasn't overwhelmed with pride at having achieved my goal in life; I never set out to be a teacher. I wasn't excited at the power I now held to allow a student to use the restroom only when I deemed it a good time; I never really liked having to ask to use the bathroom when I was in school and I certainly felt a little weird when students felt they had to ask me. I was just startled that I had become an adult without even noticing it or really ever wanting it.

The second time I just had to laugh. It was one of those times when that old saying I heard a thousand times as a child had come flying out of my mouth without ever having a chance to stop it. Shea had been standing at the fridge for at least five minutes thinking that, maybe, if she stared at it long enough, some item of food would stand up and scream, "Hey, if you put a little of me on that loaf of bread on the bottom shelf over there, and then spread some of my neighbor, Mr.Jelly, on another slice, you might just have a sandwich that would fill the hole in your belly."

The peanut butter never spoke up and so she sat with the door wide open waiting. Then the words flew past my lips without waiting for my mind to approve. "Shut the refrigerator door. You'll let all the cold air out."

And, in a flash, I had become not only my parents, but, every set of parents form the baby boomer generation that were counting every penny wasted by leaving that fridge door open. The same parents who reminded us of the plight of the starving kids in Africa when we were full and didn't want to eat food just because it had been placed on our plates (maybe, if we hadn't been told to clear our plates every night, we may not have the obesity epidemic we have in America now.)

I had now, with one exclamation, become one of the thousands who had gone before me who are suddenly enraged at the thought of cold air escaping the bounds of the fridge. I had unwittingly become the parent of the sitcom, and I had to laugh at myself.

Today, however, was a moment I had looked forward to for years. It was one I had pursued and one I was ready to embrace. You see Christine Colby was not like most of the other moms. She liked music and had favorite movies. She went to concerts and took vacations with her girlfriends and traveled. She did stuff She had a life.

And at the same time she never let it take away from her kids or her husband. She was one of the few moms that was a real person outside of being a mom. Maybe she was the only mom who let us kids see her outside life, but I think she may have been one of the only ones who actually had a life.

Now that I have kids of my own and know people with kids, I see far too many women who lose themselves in their kids. Their entire lives become about those kids. They do for them and love them and they do a great job, but, even when they have a moment to be with other adults they still talk only about the kids. They never do anything for themselves, they have no hobbies or interests outside the kids. And then when the kids grow up and go off to college they are left with themselves, but, they have forgotten who they were and have no idea of where to start looking again.

Christine was never one of those women. I knew from the time I was eight that she was the kind of mom I wanted to be. I wanted to travel with my girlfriends. I wanted to ski. I wanted to be a person despite the fact that I was a mom.

And I wanted to be a really good mom, just like Christine. One who invited the neighborhood kids over and who was really close to her kids, who was always there when they had a problem and offer really good advice. A mom who let her kids take all of the quarters she saved in a 5-gallon arrowhead jar when they wanted to bike to the local pizza joint and get a slice. A mom who planned great birthday parties and who worked the snack shack at the softball field. I wanted to make homemade pizzas every Friday for family movie night.

And I wanted to make hundreds of tiny, dollar-sized pancakes when my daughter has her friends over for sleepovers. It's the one part of becoming an adult I have not accepted begrudgingly, but, have looked forward to with anticipation for years and am so glad to now say that I have become. Today I became just like Christine Colby and I couldn't be happier.

Three at a Time

Three? Three at a time? Really? Three? Didn’t they learned in Kindergarten like the rest of us that’s it is the polite thing to take turns.

I could even have handle two of them at a time, but three? Why couldn’t it be that when the bronchitis wants a turn the diabetes politely says, “Oh, Bronny, you haven’t had a turn in a while, and I’m getting sick of this rain. Why don’t I take a little vacation to the Bahamas and you can have your turn with Erin.”

That way, when I have to take the steroids to return my lungs to the working condition, my blood sugars would remain stable instead of them climbing so high and being so unreasonably determined to remain that way. And when I have to stop exercising because my lungs no longer work it won’t cause my body to be resistant to the very insulin I need to stay alive.

And when my thyroid wants to join in on the party he would say kindly to Bronny and the diabetes in some haughty British accent, “Bronny, Tess, would you two mind considerably if I were to take a go with her. I have learned much from watching the both of you in your differing assaults on her health and would love the opportunity to try my hand.”

They both would acquiesce and be off. And while they are doing such a good job being so polite, possibly they could post a sign on the door that would elegantly deny access to my family from any other sort of illness that was hoping to take up residence.

As if its not hard enough to deal with a “very bad case” (said tongue firmly planted in cheek) of Diabetes, bronchitis so bad that to blow the propeller on my son’s remote control helicopter almost causes me to pass out, and a thyroid that has decided no longer to listen to its regulatory inputs and instead produce copious amounts of hormone whenever it feels the desire, I have a daughter with a stomach ache so bad to keep her out of school for a couple of days and a husband who has come down with a chest shaking cough only days before his biggest triathlon of the year.

So maybe I should bring that exasperated cry up to Five? Five at a time? Really? Five?

Where Did All the Fun Go?

Do you remember the time in your life when all your responsibilities for the day could be filled in about 20 minutes? Get up, make your bed, feed the dog and clean your room. The rest of the day was yours.

And each day seemed to last forever. They stretched out for ever in front of you. LIke an eternal adventure you never knew in which direction it would blow. Stretch three months of those days together and it became forever. You'd suck every opportunity out of every last minute, too.

Roll out of bed at 9 to a warm breakfast and then off to swimming all morning in the ocean until your hands turned blue and your lips would match. Then running up to lay on the hot sand until you thawed out and finish it up with a lunch of a jelly-jelly-sandwich and a thermos of warm Strawberry Falls Kool-Aid.

Or sitting out on the curb in front of your house past 9 on a warm summer night with a few friends you just met that day trying to stave off the moment your mom would appear in the lighted doorway to call you to come in for the night. When all was about fun. Every minute was about fun. Where is all that fun now?

My last Thursday looked a little more like this. Up at 4:30, out to the garage for 40 minutes on the bike trainer, shower, get kids fed and ready for school, find missing shoes and mismatched socks, chase Eli around the house to get his birds nest of a head to look a tad bit more like an intentional hair style all as we are walking out the door.

Groups of 35 11-year-olds asking 472 questions an hour for 5 hours. Off at 12:30, stop by home to switch cars, get sandwich to eat in the car, hit the pharmacy to combat the latest cold and the local district office to get Shea an inter-district transfer to get her to a better school next year.

Running late. Fifteen minutes to get to a meeting 20 minutes away and no gas. Avoid El Camino Real which is a zoo at lunch time. Wrack my brain for an alternate route.

Fake it. Turn right on Rancho Santa Fe Road. It hits Leucadia Boulevard, right?

And then just for a moment, there it is again. I had never been on Rancho Santa Fe before and it's like driving through an old mountain town with old houses on big lots and tons of open space. And as I start down the road it all starts to slow down.

Just seconds in and a field of wildflowers catches my eye and I'm instantly back in the Spring of my Sophomore year at UCSD. Just about every weekend I would drive home to Seal Beach. I would sit the whole time and just stare out the window.

You see, there was this portion of the drive where the side of the 5 was literally coated with wildflowers, bright orange and yellow. And they made this warm, soft, carpet of color that made you want to pull over, get out and just lie in it. To feel the fuzzy flowers hold you up to the sun that would bake your skin. I could lie there for hours, thinking about nothing, fully engulfed in the sun and the flowers.

It was a good time in life when I felt like I had all I wanted and hadn't hit that part in life where the responsibilities start to encroach on every aspect of everything I do like the late afternoon high tide that comes up and slowly eats away all of the footprints and sandcastles and holes that the summer visitors had made. It creeps up, and wipes clean the whole beach until there's no signs at all that, once, earlier that day, fun was had there in that very spot.

This old song came on the radio from the early 90's. Its name escapes me, but it was one of those songs that was overplayed on all the stations until it really framed that era. Perfect, just perfect, I thought.

And the flowers continued as I drove. Another field over on the left, a patch behind that old church, a few scattered here and there.

And then Leucadia Boulevard. Make a left. Find gas station. Gift card won't work. Don't take Visa. They take debit, I think there's $4.30 left in the account.

I hope there's $4.30 left in the account.

Put in $2.50 just to be safe.

Check time. Need to be at the meeting four minutes ago. Like those odds.

Sit in an hour long meeting trying to improve math placement standards that have already been decided and solidified. Race home to cook dinner, clean up, showers for all, pack lunches. Pray and put kids to bed. Read stories. Get kids water. Race out to put in an hour tutoring.

Come home at 8:15. try to have a coherent conversation with Tony. Collapse into bed and wonder where my day went. Start all over again tomorrow.

With a day like that, I think it might be time for a change.