Child Employment and Character Building

I recently unearthed a diary from when I was 12 and planned to open a beauty spa in my parent's house. What I later learned in B-school was called the "Unique Selling Proposition" (USP) was that, after the neighborhood ladies had paid me to apply wet oatmeal to their faces, do their makeup with the Lip Smackers line, and french braid their hair, I was going to invite them to lie on chaise lounges in my backyard with Fleetwood Mac album jackets that I'd covered in tin foil. You know, to boost the skin-cancer properties of unprotected tanning.

It may sound like a pre-teen's fever dream, but in fact the spa was just another in the series of childhood businesses I started, each with their own USP. Yet people say "Child Labor" like it's a bad thing.

Today I'm over on "It Builds Character…And Other Parenting Clichés" with a post lamenting the loss of childhood entrepreneurship.  The team of contributors there tackles everything from home décor during the potty training phase to why Gwyneth Paltrow is never going to convince us that her life is as bad as ours. Clearly, I've found some like-minded ranters; I'm thrilled they invited me to guest post!

Hope you'll click through here to read more (and to see a picture of me in my Business Bandana when I was nine and co-director of a thriving neighborhood preschool.)

Misty Eyed Memorial Day Memories

You can keep your barbeques, your parades, and your sparklers. What really says Memorial Day to me is a large piece of sawdust sending shooting pains through my eye.

The Memorial Day Picnic of my childhood was epic. Living on one side of a driveway shaped like a capital "T", our little stretch of asphalt was the locus for an all-day party for the neighbors up and down Branford Road. It started in the morning when someone would show up to string a volleyball net across the driveway; meanwhile, kids knelt in their driveways with rolls of crepe streamers, tricking out their banana seat no-speed bikes.

By noon the grills were lined up in our driveway and people were showing up with folding chairs and dishes to put down on the long tables, jello molds and iceberg lettuce salads and bowls of pretzels. The Genesee Cream Ale keg was tapped right around the same time that the fire engines showed up, not to douse the roaring gas-fueled flames of the barbeques ("stand back, kids, this might jump a little!")  but to lead the kids around the block in a costume parade, streamers flying backwards off the bike. Truly, my dad's role as a volunteer fireman provided no end of perks for us.

We didn't have marching bands but whoever had a flute or a nose whistle would chime in, a cacophony of sound syncopated by the playing cards that the boys stuck in their bike spokes so the wheels would click-click-click with every turn.

By 2 pm the kids were back, the beer was flowing, the moms were laughing, and the volleyball was careening dangerously across the makeshift court. But the real action came when the sawdust pile was unveiled. Where my father found a 6 foot by 4 foot pile of sawdust standing three feet deep every year was and remains a mystery. But what it held was no mystery: coins, wrapped hard candies, lollipops, and plastic toys, all buried inside the sawdust pile by the grownups.

In the seconds before the whistle blew, we kids would line up with our toes on the square plastic tarp that held the pile, trying to plan a line of attack. But once the whistle blew it was kill or be killed, all of us diving in and feeling around for the goodies, quarters and nickels and Jolly Ranchers  and Bazooka gum that would set us up for the whole summer.

It usually took about 30 seconds of flailing before the first casualty. "Aaaagh! My eye!" someone would scream, staggering away with a chip of sawdust in one watering eye and looking for his mom with the other one. "Aaagh! Ouch!" followed in short intervals until pretty much all the kids were standing around pulling upper eyelids over lower to flush out the pain, sawdust clinging not just to eyes but to hair, shirts, and legs. Within a half hour everyone was back to normal, settling in for some serious socializing until way past bedtime.

If the firetruck was there to entertain the kids, I'm firmly convinced that the sawdust pile massacre was the main Memorial Day entertainment attraction for the grownups.

Here's a little scene from the Talking Heads movie "True Stories" that I always loved because it reminded me of the merry band of miscreants with whom I grew up on Branford Road. And the little girl in pigtails is a dead ringer for me at age seven. "I am the king of the world! The boss of the boys and girls!" May you have just that kind of Memorial Day weekend.

My Inner Rebel: Tortured

It was the tiny Roma granny pulling on my cowboy boots that finally broke me.

Of course, that's not an excuse. Nor is youth, nor loneliness. But when I reveal to you my mortifying disclosure, I'd at least like you to know that those things, plus the bent-over Gypsy matriarch putting on my boots and doing a gleeful jig as I watched from my apartment window in Munich, influenced the embarrassing thing I did next.

I skipped out on a phone bill.

Specifically, I was days away from moving back to America after living abroad for the two years, working in my first post-college job. This was before the Internet, so my weekly phone calls home were my most vivid connection to the family I'd blithely left behind, intent on My Big Adventure. Moving to a country where I knew no one proved more challenging than I'd expected, so the phone chats - necessarily staccato, due to the cost of international calls - reminded me that I had a good foundation somewhere, even if I felt adrift some days living overseas.

Over time I settled in just fine, found a circle of friends, found many things to love about life abroad. But eventually I knew I wanted to move back to the States.

So I didn't pay much attention when a young American expat advised me there was a way to prevent the national phone authority, to which every consumer was beholden for phone service, from sending the last bill. "If you terminate your contract for the week after you leave, they don't know where to send it," he said, and went on to tell me about friends who had been on the phone for hours, days even, prior to departure, and never paid a pfennig.

I filed it away somewhere in the small part of my brain not given over to the miles-long checklist of things to do before leaving: sell everything in the apartment but my clothes, quit my job with an anger-prone boss, terminate my lease, decide whether or not to break up with my German boyfriend. When the classified ads I placed in the local paper turned up little interest in my household goods, Desperation settled herself on a tree branch nearby; my landlady was a stout, angry Bavarian woman who scared the bejesus out of me and told me she'd keep my deposit if the place wasn't entirely empty when I left.

Still, I kept my head down as I packed up my two duffel bags, began offering German friends and later mere acquaintances my bike, my bookshelves, my refrigerator.  All the while, the phone sat in the middle of the floor (I'd sold the table,) beckoning me. 

Finally, with only 24 hours left before I had to vacate the apartment, I took everything that was left, including a perfectly good pair of cowboy boots that didn't fit into my suitcase, and hurried it all out to the curb. In my pristine, quiet neighborhood, that was probably in violation of at least 37 regulations.

I am not a rule breaker by nature. But living in Germany, where abiding by and enforcing rules is a national pastime, I was frequently seized with a desire to do something really wrong. Once I dumped my stuff on the curb, what was left to stop me? I might just mix up my paper and aluminum recycling now, or cross the street against the light! I glanced out the window just as the large Roma family walked up and began weeding through my treasured belongings, all that remained of my Big Adventure abroad.

And I picked up the phone and called home. Then I moved away, leaving only echoes in the apartment.

Based on my calculations, the phone bill would have been about $25. If you were to put a price on the time I've spent over the past 20 years being mortified about not paying it, it adds up to about $250,000. Such a high price for a stupid decision.

When I lecture my children about the importance of being honest, this is the story that plays in my head while I talk.  "It's not worth living with the lie," I tell them, and I truly mean it.

How did you learn the lesson?

School Lunches on Autopilot

Next week is spring break for our kids. We're staying in town and haven't planned much, but I'm as excited as if we were going to Hawaii for the week. Because I have five whole days off from making lunches.

Every morning as I pull out the lunchboxes I am reminded of what Dorothy Parker reportedly said whenever her telephone rang: “What fresh hell is this?” Some weeks I’m on a health kick, making sandwiches on high fiber high protein bread spread with soynut butter accompanied by fresh fruit, low-fat pretzels, and fruit juice. Other weeks it’s the path of least resistance: plain pasta with olive oil in a thermos, gummies (at least it says fruit on the wrapper) and a couple of Girl Scout cookies, alongside some chocolate milk. Whatever. I'll make them eat a banana when they get home.

In the morning I spend a lot of time crossing from refrigerator to pantry to microwave, stopping in the middle of the kitchen to think, sighing, trying to remember which girl likes pretzels and which one likes dried apricots, and then resuming the circuit. As a person who now packs an average of 40 lunches a month, I am awed that my mom found a simple formula and stuck with it, for three kids, for at least ten years.

The school lunches of my childhood were an object of envy, and not because they were gourmet. When you’re nine years old, the last thing in the world you want is a lunch that is different from every else’s, emitting garlicky odors or displaying shiny textures or unusual colors. In short: if you would pay top dollar to eat a particular dish at a top rated restaurant specializing in ethnic cuisine as an adult, it may as well be plutonium when it show up in a lunch box.  That’s why the lunches carried by the Davis kids were so darn right. They didn’t try to be anything but what we were: bland and middle class.

A sandwich, either peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and butter, peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff (catching a trend yet?) or the cheese sandwiches that my siblings and I used to tease my mom about, as she unwrapped the bright orange squares from their individual cellophane wrappers. “Mmmmm, American Processed Cheese Food Product,” we’d say, reading the cheese packaging label aloud and careful to stay just out of swatting distance. “My favorite!”

A single serving size bag of Fritos nestled alongside the wax paper-wrapped sandwiches. My mouth still waters at the memory of their fatty, salty, corn goodness pressing rectangular tracks onto my tongue, as I savored them in the cacophony of the Council Rock Elementary School cafeteria. 

Next into the paper lunch sack went a Hostess Ho-Ho, which is where my siblings and I exerted some individuality. My oldest sister always ate hers like it was corn on the cob, slowing rotating it and nibbling through the hard chocolate exterior then the cakey layer, until she got to the vanilla cream inside. My brother, disconcertingly referred to as "Little Larry" even after he'd topped 6 feet, could put one away in a single gulp. And I liked to break little bits of mine off and pop them in my mouth, examining the strata of the rolled pastry cake as I went.

At the bottom of the lunch sack was the shiny New York state Macintosh apple. That went straight into the garbage.

I don’t recall envying anyone’s lunch, or ever trading parts of mine away. There was no room for improvement as far as I was concerned, and I never complained about monotony. Who’s stupid enough to complain about a Hostess Ho-Ho?

Don't bother telling me that my kids are old enough to make their own lunches; you know it, they know it, and I know it. But it's not a hill I'm willing to die on. The fact is that the mornings they make their own lunches are filled with trauma and tears and they end up packing a 100% starch meal, whereas if I pack the lunch the trauma and tears are at least accompanied by 50% protein and fiber. It's simple math.

Frankly, if I was clever enough to come up with a lunch formula that would last for a decade, as my mother did, I wouldn’t care if resembled the food pyramid or a food pyre. It would be enough to have the whole process on autopilot.

Clutter? No, my childhood.

When I first walked through the house we've lived in for eight years now, the owners had taped handmade arrow signs throughout the rambling downstairs. Past the peach-colored room with French doors and the biggest entertainment console I'd ever seen, down a dark hall past a laundry room and bathroom, signs said "Keep Going! Don't Give Up Yet!" I finally crossed through a barren storage room with rough concrete floors to see a door in the corner with an arrow beckoning and behind that: another narrow shelved storage area, and a wholly unnecessary second kitchen.

My dad's first reaction, when he saw the embarrassment of storage space in the new house compared to the snug bungalow from which we were moving, was to shake his head and say, "If you've got it, you'll fill it up."

I think of that response each spring when I enter the narrow storage space, determined to pare down its contents, and see my box of troll dolls sitting on the shelf. 

Constant companions through my elementary school years in the '70s, the five trolls - Herbert and Pinky were the parents, Hubert, Buttercup, and Daisy were their three same-sized kids - are still packed into a tissue box-turned-camper and surrounded by little cough drop tins containing their homemade wardrobes. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Blumberg, had a strict no-dolls rule for her class. But because we were suck-up good girls and she must have had too few of those, my best friend Kitty and I were allowed to bring in our respective troll families and line them up on the edge of the desk every day, their googly eyes bearing witness to the blatant favoritism. 

For two girls who were singled out as class leaders, Kitty and I sure fought a lot. We had a major argument nearly every day of third grade; by fifth grade we were no longer speaking. (No worries: that troll foundation proved enduring - even though she lives on the other side of the globe now, Kitty's still one of my dearest friends.) 

Trolls enjoying view of scenic Bar Harbor

Even if we fought, we at least agreed on our trolls. We spent afternoon stretched out on our respective bedroom floors, cutting scraps of fabric into tiny shirts and dresses and sewing clumsy single button closures on the back. That summer her family took me along on an epic road trip to Maine, and most of my souvenir pictures are close ups of the trolls, with lighthouses or lobsters or starfish fuzzy in the background.

At some point - probably around the first time a boy asked me to sit with him for the haunted house ride at Roseland Park -  I boxed them up, sealed the box with duct tape, wrote TROLLS on it and threw it into my parent's attic. Eventually they slapped a mailing label on the box and sent it out to California where my husband and I are raising two daughters. When the oldest one entered third grade, I pulled out the box, surprised to see that Herbert and Pinky were still nestled in the chaste matrimonial embrace in which I entombed them.

"Girls, here. I want you to have these. They were extremely special to me. Here, see all the cute little clothes I made?"

Within about an hour of surreptitiously watching the girls while pretending to cook dinner, I swooped in to rescue them. The trolls, not the daughters. Herbert NEVER wore the argyle vest made from the top of my dad's work socks, and anyone could see that Buttercup looked terrible in mauve. I packed up the box; the fact that the kids didn't protest was probably a sign that the relationship was never going to work out anyway.

Did I throw them out when I started this year's spring cleaning? Of course not. The box is back in the storage area. And I await the arrival of my grandchildren in twenty years with hope eternal.

The pull of going home

I'm going home this weekend - to see my mom and dad, catch up with my sister and brother, and see neighbors and friends in the town where I spent my first 18 years. I'll eat some bagels, visit the the local tavern with my brother, take my aunt out for a belated birthday lunch, and go to a big Family Camp reunion. I can't wait.

I'm leaving home this weekend - leaving Andrew and the girls, my own bed, my spazzy dog, and some  overdue warm California weather after a long winter. I'm missing a dinner party, neglecting my poor drowned garden again, worrying about leaving the kids who have been sniffling and coughing for a week straight. I'm dreading leaving.

Here's something about being a grown up that no one ever told me. As much as I adore being with my husband and children in the home we've made: it's pretty much the same amount that I miss being with my parents and siblings 3,000 miles away. It's not a deficit but a surfeit of love and longing. Maybe it's different if you live in the same area code as your parents, but maybe not; for people like me who were blessed to grow up in a close and loving family, there is always a pull to return, no matter how happy our adult lives are.

So my song for this week is a melancholy Teddy Thompson ballad called "Home" in which he has the whole situation nailed. As he explains in his lyrics, you go home to see your parents who will feed you, do your laundry, and fuss over you, and you love it. Right up until the minute when you're ready to go home again. I'll be heartsick missing my family while I'm home visiting my family this weekend, and just as soon as I'm back in Cali, I'll be wishing I could spend more time in New York.

Here's hoping that you feel at home wherever you are in the world this weekend, friends -

Edwardian Ghosts

I don't have anything against the Real Housewives franchise; most of my friends watch at least one iteration of the show and through their recaps I have gained a passing familiarity with the loud, overconfident, and materialistic ladies of New Jersey, Atlanta, and Beverly Hills like secondhand smoke inhalation. But my taste in household drama runs towards the traditional - as in, once a character shows up in a motorcar spitting dust and shrieking about how exhilarating it all is, I feel like Fonzie's airborne over the shark.

I come by my love of Edwardian costume drama honestly. Growing up, one of my favorite times of the week was Sunday evening at 9 pm, when I’d sit on the floor in my parents’ room and watch “Masterpiece Theatre” with my mother while I finished my homework. It was hosted by a man we jokingly called Alice The Cook, and Mom and I followed the trials and tribulations of the Upstairs, Downstairs characters like they were family.

They almost could have been. My grandparents came from Yorkshire and before he joined the Royal Navy, my grandfather worked as a gardener on the grounds of the castle used to film “Brideshead Revisited.” That's my downstairs connection. Meanwhile, hoping for a more upstairs future, we kept a tiny framed picture of Lumley Castle in the front hall – Lumley being my grandfather's family name, and me being hopeful that one day a man dressed in a Beefeater outfit would inexplicably knock on the front door and name me its rightful inheritor. 

So I couldn’t be more proud to be handing down the obsession to our two daughters via steady exposure to Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and the newest Masterpiece Theatre delight, “Downton Abbey.” Set in 1913, it follows both the wealthy Grantham family and the army of servants that keeps their grand home running. All three of us watched it, rapt, while Andrew hid upstairs and played on the scrabblePad. When each 90 minute segment was done, we spent another 400 minutes discussing it. 

Who’s your favorite character? Why did Thomas and William get in a fight? Why did Daisy put molasses in the soup and then cry? Why has it taken this long for the lovely Elizabeth McGovern to finally get a decent role again?

During one episode the ten year old commented on the appearance of the three Grantham daughters, all of whom are being cosseted until they make good marriages. “They’re so pale!” she said. “Lady Mary is practically invisible!” (Lady Mary is indeed what my friend Barrette calls “Jellyfish Pale.”) This led to a discussion of how being pale, and for men being portly, were outward signs of power and money at the turn of the last century. “The people who were the lowest in society were the ones who worked outside, and didn't have much money for extra food,” I explained. “The last thing you wanted to be was tan and skinny.”

Unlike today, of course.

There's an aspirational pull to watching these three Grantham daughters who spend their busy days at the dressmaker, reading on a chaise, or horseback riding: the real Bachelorettes of Berkshire County. What child in her right mind wouldn't fantasize about having maids who will make your bed, tie your shoes, do your hair, and tell you how beautiful you look every day?

But there's a catch. In one scene, Lady Mary comes to the defense of her younger, idealistic sister Sybil, who is catching hell from her father and grandmother for having attended a political rally with the dreamy Socialist chauffeur. “She has a right to her own opinion,” Lady Mary says.

That’s when the dowager grandmother, played by Dame Maggie Smith with such perfect ferocity that she may as well lean over and take a bite out of the camera lens, says “No she does not! When she gets married, her husband will tell her what to think!” 

At that line, both of my opinionated modern girls looked at me with saucer eyes, barely able to stifle their laughter. What girl on earth would wait to have an opinion until she received it fully formed, like a communion wafer, from her husband? It was the same expression worn by Dame Maggie when a distant, middle class  relation (oh the horror) told her about some upcoming travel plans. She interrupted him and said, "What is a week-end?"

There are some things in life worth preserving, like exquisite manners and watching British costume drama with your mom. But when it comes to the systemic and pervasive subjugation of women - a lively topic what with some of the federal budget cuts now on the table - good riddance. Not even for the keys to Lumley Castle.

Boredom and the White Cloth of Surrender

I wonder how many times each day a kid bursts out of a bedroom overflowing with books, art supplies, and toys in order to sigh to a parent, "I'm so BOOOORED." It's probably equivalent to the number of times an adult looks around in a panic and thinks, "How am I going to get the lawn mowed, the meat thawed for dinner, the dog walked, and the office budget report completed before I fade to black in front of Real Housewives?"

Remember childhood boredom? When you used to cast around your home wonder WHAT you were going to do with the long weekend afternoon stretched out in front of you? The concept of having "nothing to do" for even fifteen minutes has become as remote to me as the summit of Mount McKinley. If I'm in my house, there is always something to be done, whether it's folding a load of laundry or returning work emails or replanting the anemic looking ivy in the living room. I've often said that for a real vacation, I don't require a spa or a resort or a plane ticket. I just want to go to a Motel 6 and slip into something more comfortable, like ennui.

And yet kids flee from boredom like it's broccoli-covered beets.

I regard a bored child as I do a youngster who coughs on me without covering his mouth or touches all the cookies on a plate before selecting one. It's not necessarily the child's fault; they just need some redirection from an attentive adult.

That's why I instituted a zero tolerance policy for boredom in our house. More accurately, I encourage boredom, but not the bemoaning thereof.

It was probably five years ago when someone in my house said, "I'm bored," and I first said, "That's fine. I need help dusting. I'll get you the cloth." By the fourth or fifth time this sequence unfolded, the kids knew I meant it and would clap their hands over their own mouths as the b-word escaped, then scurry off to their bedrooms like cockroaches before a flashlight. "No, no, I didn't say I was bored, I was going to…." before the door slammed shut.

Even more dramatic is their reaction when an unsuspecting friend comes over to play and, at some point during the visit, stops by where I'm washing dishes in the kitchen to inform me, "I'm bored." My kids scramble as I head towards the closet where we keep the cleaning supplies. "No she's not, Mom, she's not, we're gonna go play in the backyard, bye Mom," they yell, pushing the confused offender before them before I can make the ceremonial presentation of the Boredom Cleaning Cloth.

I credit my mother-in-law for reinforcing my embrace of tedium. When the kids were still tiny she said to me, "There is just no need for a child to say they're bored, ever. A kid needs that room to let their minds wander and to think up new things. Don't fall for it." As someone who personally conceived of the entire Kid's Choice Awards event while staring out the window on a drive to Lake Placid with my mom, my aunt Margaret, and my cousin Michael back in 1977, I can certainly vouch for the creativity that bubbles up when pre-planned activities aren't provided. (Had I not been so distracted by a simultaneous Little House on the Prairie obsession, I probably would have made something of it, too.) 

Giving in to boredom takes the parent off the cruise-director hook. The other day my bored 4th grader and her friend spent three hours planning and staging "Animal Wicked," the tale of what happened in Oz before Dorothy dropped in, with all parts played by stuffed animals. The male lead was played by a fuzzy snake wearing leg warmers.  I promise you I would never have thought to suggest any aspect of that activity, and definitely would not have cast the purple cow as the green Wicked Witch of the West (too pitchy.) But the berry-colored bovine turned in a triumphant performance that has me looking forward to seeing her take on Evita.

In fact, watching the juicy projects and plans my kids and their friends come up with while bored makes me a little ashamed that I can encourage it in them, but not myself. It's so tempting to appear busy all the time, to use it as some kind of a proof that we are important to the people around us - bosses, clients, spouses, children. In our pinched and worried world, there is something brave about saying, "I am not going to do anything for the hour," and just seeing where it takes us. 

In a sense, not ever letting yourself be bored as an adult amounts to a voluntary handover of the creative spark that might help us come up with better, smarter, more colorful ways to live our lives.

So I'm going to see if the Boredom Cleaning Cloth is bidirectional. Next time I am tempted to take it out and clean up dust that isn't yet bothering anyone, I'll sentence myself to 15 minutes hard labor: staring into space and allowing my mind to wander.

Triangulating Childhood Musical Tastes

For three people growing up in the same house, my sister, brother and I occupied radically different neighborhoods on the FM dial.

Picture yourself walking into the upstairs hallway of my childhood home in the early 1980s, up a steep flight of carpeted steps that crests at a square landing.  From far down the hallway in front of you, twangy vocals and lots of slide guitar fill the air; Mac Davis, Kenny Rogers, Alabama, or whatever other mustachioed country singer was rocking the air waves in the early 1980s all played in heavy rotation on my sister’s stereo. Her early love of horses morphed, quite reasonably, into love of cowboys and all their accoutrements by the time she was in high school.

Directly to your left, behind the closed door reverberating in its frame, is my brother, who is shaking his head (and playing his drums along with) The Who. To break up the routine (and himself,) he throws on a Monty Python album now and again, but primarily it's The Who, cranked all the way up.

All that’s left to visit is my room, hung with posters of the Human League, Split Enz, Duran Duran – basically any band comprising men who wore more makeup than I was allowed to as a teenage girl.  If their hair was aerodynamically styled, they wore lady suits, and no one else had heard of them yet, I was the first in line to buy their new album at the Record Archive over in Pittsford. On this imaginary day, I am probably playing a Wham! UK import and wondering how George Michael gets his eyeliner just so. 

I realize that the normal course of action is for children to rebel against their parents' musical tastes, but my parents never seemed to listen to music. In fact, their hi-fi was so seldom turned on that its cabinets became the hiding spot – a suburban Ark of the Covenant, if you will – of the Founding Principles of the Branford Road Kids Club, written on a piece of crinkled notebook paper with pencil. These seminal documents were unearthed sometime in the late 1990s by family archeologists. Rule One: “No Budders.” Rule Two: “Don’t be freinds with Budders.” We’d tolerate a lot of things on Branford Road, but cutting ahead of someone in line, the dreaded "budding," was not one of them.

So we were comfortable with rules, and the main rule was that we had to rebel against each other. All three of us were devoted to our particular genre and more than that, to the principles of operating in opposition. It wasn’t enough for me to like New Wave , punk, and later, rap; I had to also hate rock and country. My siblings had similar interlocking opinions. Like a three legged stool we seemed to work better when keeping a bit of distance from one another – perhaps the reason my sister studied French, my brother Spanish, and me German when middle school language requirements came around. 

A good part of every family dinner was spent mocking each other's musical tastes. I think the fervor probably came from fear that otherwise, the whole house of cards - the identities we were carefully constructing for ourselves -  would fall apart. If you couldn't even be true to the soundtrack you'd chosen for your life, admitted you quietly turned down Haircut 100 whenever Baba O'Riley came on down the hall, what hope was there for the other fictions of adolescent self-invention?  

Decades later, we've managed to loosen up and settle into the deep grooves of our respective lives, at least to a point that peeking up and over them is a lot less threatening.  It was my sister, not me, who took a hip hop tour of Harlem with Kurtis Blow a few years ago, and I was the one getting all hot and bothered over a recent local bluegrass festival. My brother continues to combine the comic with the rock; he's recently decided his favorite band is  Enter the Haggis, not because he's ever heard their music, but due to the sheer genius of the name.

I suppose it was inevitable, given the fluid way that music overlaps its boundaries.  If Aerosmith and RunDMC could get together on Walk This Way and Robert Plant and Allison Krauss found common ground for Raising Sand, what's the point of all the pigeonholing?    

My brother recently came to visit and we sat down side by side for a ritualistic review of each other's iPod playlists. He had ABC's The Look of Love; I had The Who's Who's Next. We both had Little Feat's Dixie Chicken, which is about as country as it gets. I'd wager that we matched up on at least half of the songs we'd so carefully curated. But there was no way I was going to tell him that. 

"Mine's still better," I smirked.

Look: if I broke the rule and told him I liked his music, who knows what kind of wanton budding might break out next?

Bedroom Tour

Hello, and welcome to this stop of the Bedrooms of the Oakmore Highlands tour! As you know, it's a fundraiser for the local public school, as is just about every public gathering around here. Did you notice the signs at either end of the street with the lovely graphic of a smiling house? This corner of Oakland is now called The Oakmore Highlands, and with a fancy name like that the introduction of a House Tour seemed inevitable. My homeowner association dues helped pay for the signs (I suppose passing those fund straight to the chronically underfunded schools didn't occur to anyone.) Did they make you feel safer and happier? Good.

At any rate, you're here now and as it's a school fundraiser, what's more fitting than focusing on the rooms in which the youngest members of the family live? We'll start  with the first door on your right, the one with scratchmarks on it at the dog's shoulder height.  Once you step inside - careful of that stack of theater scripts  and musical soundtracks on the floor, please - you'll see why he's always clamoring to get inside. It's a hunting dog's paradise, if what you like hunting is stuffed animals!

Here, there, absolutely everywhere, you'll notice that every horizontal surface is covered with plush toys (what the natives here colloquially refer to as "Stuffties." ) Well. That's not exactly true. Since books and Stuffties cannot, by the laws of physics, occupy the same space at the same time, some of the Stuffties actually sit atop the books that are strewn haphazardly throughout the room. You'll notice books about ballerinas, books about the theater, books about ballerinas in the theater. It's as if the bookcase sneezed, isn't it?

Finally you may notice the artwork that settles like new snow into the nooks and crannies of the bedroom, covering up any last glimpses of the carefully painted periwinkle walls, whimsical furniture, and hand-sewn floral curtains with which I once I so painstakingly decorated this space. Drawings of wizarding schools, drawing of twee orphanages, drawing of Broadway musicals; if you need a drawing that features tiny details, long-legged girls, and round-featured puppies , which are later interpreted in a theatrical production in which this room's occupant plays every part, you've found the right spot.

You may have heard that this room was once double occupancy. It's true; we, the homeowners,  made a deal with the two junior residents that they could each have their own rooms, as long as they followed a long list of rules about keeping them clean and making their beds each day and not letting clutter accumulate. What…are you okay? Are you allergic to dustbunnies? Oh, you're laughing. Well.  Probably a good time to close the door and move on to the second bedroom.

As we walk down the stairs I will warn you that this room's occupant has had three years more on the planet to accumulate what I'll refer to as "Special Things" than the Stufftie aficionado. "Special Things" are those items whose value is cleverly concealed from the casual viewer, but whose disposal will cause the object's owner to flop around on the floor like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. These include but are not limited to a coconut sent from Florida as a postcard by my brother to his niece, empty packaging from toys that were lost two summers ago, and a piece of brown yarn being archived for future use as a bridle for a toy horse. All these Special Things and more await the careful observer within.

Let me just put my shoulder against the door; sometimes the mountain of clean clothes that have yet to make it into drawers or closets is just stubborn. Here we are. As you can see, the predominant color themes are peppy pink with a slice of lime. Plus horses. Horses everywhere - you may note the large collection of plastic Breyer horses crammed atop the dresser, many of which are considered collector's items now. That's because my sister sent her horse-crazy niece a giant box of her old Breyer horses, the very same collection that I was forbidden to touch during my entire childhood. But I digress.

Like I said, horses. And fashion. Did you jump out of your shoes a bit to see the headless mannequin standing at the foot of the bed? Or were you just surprised at how many fabric swatches can be affixed to one lonely dress form without toppling it? The stack of cut up fashion magazines at the foot of the mannequin are not happenstance, as I too have mistakenly assumed from time to time. They are Inspiration. Evidently if they are not dog-eared and tattered until they look like Miss Haversham's dress, the room's occupant cannot achieve the right frame of mind to properly drape the aforementioned mannequin.

So pink, lime, horses, and fashion. I see you looking at the desk. Yes, that is actually a desk, I know it's hard to make out the original shape of the furniture what with the stacks of paper and books entirely covering it. Perhaps if you open the drawers - go ahead, feel free, we've bolted the entire piece to the wall - you'll be convinced. This is where the occupant keeps fabric scraps, markers, composition books, rulers. Oh - yes apparently she keeps empty candy wrappers there too, and no I couldn't hazard a guess why. The one item in the room that is kept spotless is the garbage can.

Well. That brings us to the end of our tour, I hope you've enjoyed yourself. Let me just close that door. Thank goodness for doors that close, yes?

Oh, thank you, I do pride myself on keeping the rest of the house clean and tidy; the junior residents and I clean it every Saturday. Ah. Well, I can't blame you for wondering how I put up with the state of these bedrooms.

Let me ask you a question - do you garden? Yes? Well,  I have learned to think of the detritus in those bedrooms as fertilizer. Not easy on the eyes (or nose) but serving a purpose. Those rooms are fecund with imagination, helping us grow creative people who like to be with us at home a lot. You never know where you'll be when you discover your life's passion, but my guess is that it won't happen in a barren hallway.

Or as the youngest resident says as she slings a warm arm around my neck: "I love that our house is not a museum."

Where Time Stands Still

There are so many ways in which my kids' childhood diverges from the one I had in the 70s. Not just the obvious things, like them growing up in urban California and me in suburban upstate New York, but smaller things, mostly technology driven: they live in a world where anything they want, information-wise, is right at their fingertips on the Internet, and where they can reach out and connect aurally, visually, or in text form to anyone they know, anywhere, anytime.

The girls are sizzling with information and connection in a way that was just unheard of when I was a kid, raising issues, opportunities, and fears that I never dealt with. I thudded along with World Book Encyclopedia and face to face confrontations with the schoolyard bully, while they use Wikipedia and, with one daughter entering middle school this year, a whole new uncharted territory of digital peer interaction.

So it struck me last week, while on my annual vacation in the Central Adirondacks at a Family Camp run by the Rochester NY YMCA, that it is the only place and time in which our respective childhoods converge. My family has been attending this weeklong camp, which I've written about for Adirondack Life, since 1968, and about the only thing that has changed there, besides a couple of building face-lifts, is that the staff lounge now has two Internet-enabled computers.

Other than that: the mist still rises off the lake in the morning, pulling back the curtain on a pair of dark singing loons - and the human loons who make the 7 am trek to the waterfront for "polar bear swim." The horses in the barn still need feeding and brushing before reveille, and little girls gladly jump at the chance to do that scut work. The sailboats still need draining, the lifeguard always falls for the ski boat driver, the sound of basketballs smacking the court rings from one end of the property to the other, and the square dance always starts with the Hokey Pokey so parents can put their exhausted children to bed by 9 pm to rest up for the next day of non-stop action.

As I'm standing at the corral fence, watching my daughters mount up their horses for a ride down the Raspberry Trail, I'm keenly aware of the memory of my mother doing this for me, 35 years ago...memory made sweeter because she's standing here beside me now, watching my kids. It reminds me of the old days in school when a teacher would layer one transparency over the other on an overhead projector, matching up the edges of each and deepening the image with detail.

Before I was married I would say that camp was my touchstone - no matter where I was living or what I was doing, the last week in August would always find me there because that's where my brother, sister, and parents would be. It was a great comfort, and now, even though my touchstone is wherever my husband and children are, I still feel a compass pull to the lake and the cabins that surround it.

For my children I guess the effect will be even stronger - our cabin went from holding five Davis' during my youth, to now nearly 20 Davis', Davis IIIs, Berrys, Khos, Arras' and Packards, all related in the widening spider web of family. Whereas camp was a fun family getaway for me, for my California-raised kids it is the single time of the year where they get to spend hours and hours with their New York family (who spoil them rotten.) That combination of non-stop physical activity in a gorgeous setting with a huge dose of family love - that's a gift worth handing down through the generations.

Fifty Golden Years

Somehow it was fitting that last week, the culmination of one of the most exciting presidential elections ever, was my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. My father is a Republican and my mother is a Democrat, and for half a century they've been cancelling each other's vote and then going out to breakfast together on Election Day. If that doesn't say "lasting love" then I don't know what does.

I haven't posted since last Friday because I flew to my hometown of Rochester NY to surprise them at the small family gathering they'd planned. I would love to have been sharing stories - of my long delays on my JetBlue flights, an airline that I am sad to see has gone down the tubes right along with the rest of the industry. Or of my childhood friend who read my Facebook profile and figured out that I was coming home before I'd had the chance to call her, making social networking more efficient than actual networking. Or of my Flip Mino camera, which enabled me to play greetings from my kids on my parent's TV and record Grandma and Grandpa's greetings to take back home with me with such utter ease that it wasn't the least bit intrusive.

But my parents have been nothing if steadfast in two things: their marriage, and their utter lack of interest in anything faster than dial up for their internet connection. I just don't know how we all coped back in 1992 when dial up was the only speed we had. Oh. My. Lord. The thought of trying to get onto Blogger to post was crazy making. So I unplugged for five days, enjoyed the company of my weird and wonderful family, and was actually happy to see snow fall.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad (pictured here with all eight of their grandchilren.) May your love last as long as it takes to download an Apple QuickTime update to your laptop.