Steve Jobs Made Me a Better Mom

Sure, he invented some of my favorite gadgets, but more importantly, Steve Jobs has made me a better parent.

His inventions made it possible, and fun, for me to do the most important work of my life.  His creative spirit reminds me to appreciate and nurture all the joys and frustrations of childhood, because therein lies the genius of invention, the engine of progress and the simple joy of life.

He conceived the home computer, so unlike generations before mine, I could work from home while raising my daughter.  My MacBook serves double-duty for client and volunteer projects (not to mention her homework), and my iPhone gives me the freedom and flexibility to be everywhere, while still being available to anyone anytime.  Those indispensible business tools also conveniently transform into really cool and sometimes educational toys that entertain my daughter when my attention needs to be elsewhere.

But it is his philosophy more than his devices that I really lean on to get through the rough patches.

I have a quirky kid.  She is obsessive about Harry Potter right now, but in the past she was equally fixated on Pokemon or Princesses or PlayDough.  She spends a lot of time alone with books or in imaginary worlds of her own creation.   She is really smart and funny and more than a little odd.   We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thanks to Steve Jobs, I see her quirkiness as a sign of potential greatness rather than a cause for worry.  Well, sometimes I still worry.  But, she can sit on my lap and we can watch Apple’s “Think Different” commercial and find comfort and confidence knowing that some of the world’s greatest leaders were pretty quirky too.  She might or might not be the next Steve Jobs, but thanks to him, she knows that geeks can indeed rule.  He made smart cool, and he made cool smart.

He also harnessed the kind of imagination and impatience only found in childhood to create the most innovative and transformational technologies of our time.  He proved that there is value in many of the childish impulses we too often scold and try to repress.   A demand for more, better, now pushed his software developers to do the impossible.  An insatiable desire for ever-changing and ever-accessible amusement is embodied in the iPhone.  And the compulsion to touch things, grab them, bring them closer and then push them aside to see what else you can find is the essence of the iPad.   The same behaviors that drive parents crazy actually drove his business.

I was a late-comer to the Cult of Mac, but I am here to stay.  It keeps alive the kid inside me, making me a better mom to the kid beside me.

What Cows Think (illustration by Brett Hyland)

I have some very talented artist friends in an art group called “Night of the Radish”.  Every couple of months, we meet and share something we’ve created based on a common theme.  Last night’s theme was “cows”. Coincidently, I’d already written one essay about coming face-to-face with a cow and another about the Running of the Bulls, both  for themes unrelated to cows.  So, while I clearly have some unconscious affinity for bovine, I didn’t have another cow essay in me.  I can’t draw or paint or sculpt, so instead, I wrote a little cartoon and asked my daughter to illustrate it on the computer.  This is our collaborative comic.  Watch out, Gary Larson! 

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

If you want to feel really old, watch the MTV Video Music Awards while learning to use Twitter.   Just watching the VMAs poses a high risk for seizures in anyone over 30, but when you do so with a laptop open to the Twitter feed for #VMA, you’re in for massive brain overstimulation.

The VMA experience probably deserves its own blog post, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.  The Beyonce baby announcement was the only part of it I could relate to and I didn’t even see it.  Lady Gaga (dressed as a man) and Nicki Minaj (dressed as an alien Pez dispenser?) puzzled even their diehard fans that night, so how could I possibly get them?  I could barely understand the acceptance speeches, let alone lyrics to songs I’d never heard by artists I’d never heard of.  And I thought my running mix was pretty cutting edge.  I was psyched that the Foo Fighters won something and I liked Adele’s performance, but both of those facts just prove I am old.  I am very old.

photo Getty Images

Trying to follow it all on Twitter made it worse, until it made it better.

Like most people this long-in-the-tooth, I’d been resisting Twitter.  Facebook was already taking up more time than I liked to admit, helping me reconnect with friends, share photos, spy on people.  I surmised that Twitter would just be another time-suck with even more hazardous links and privacy risks that I wouldn’t understand until too late.  That might still prove to be true.

But then Hurricane Irene left me trapped inside watching nothing but news.  I’m not sure if it was boredom or subliminal peer pressure from newscasters tired of being the only old people on Twitter, but I logged on.  I was immediately sucked into the online hurricane of tweets and let myself get swept away by the floodwaters of snarky comments and silly video links.

On day two, someone I was following mentioned the VMAs, so I turned them on.  That was something I never would have known I wanted to do before Twitter.  I noticed #VMA was trending, meaning a lot of people were tweeting about it, so I clicked on that link.  I was bombarded with 50-100 tweets per minute.  I skimmed as fast as I could, giggling at rude comments about outrageous wardrobe choices, glancing back at the tv to see if the outfits were really that bad.  They were.  There was a lot of lingo I didn’t understand, but I soon pieced together that Beyonce had patted her tummy earlier, signaling that she and Jay-Z were expecting a little one-name-phenom-to-be.  Twitter told me I had missed the biggest news of the event by not tuning in earlier, but I was still in the know.  I struggled to keep up, but my new online community helped with that.  I couldn’t figure out who was singing, but Twitter told me that the squirrelly little dude on the piano was actually Lady Gaga in man-drag.   Twitter held all the answers.  It also posed a lot of questions, like:  “Why did Justin Beiber thank God and Jesus but not the Holy Ghost?” Hmmm, a question I never would have contemplated on my own.

I soon realized that Twitter is a global, real-time chat room where you pick the topics and/or the people you want to hear from and about.   And, the best part is that you don’t need to participate in the chat to be a part of it.  It shamelessly feeds our inner voyeurism and desperate need to know everything that everyone else knows.  I was hooked.

Here’s the good news…

1)   You don’t need to commit.  You don’t need an account to check it out.  You can just go to twitter.com and see what people are tweeting.  Enter something like “Anderson Cooper” and see what he is tweeting and what others are tweeting about him.  (Just as an example, of course.)

2)   No real relationships are required.  If you do decide to get a Twitter account, you can slowly pick and choose whom you want to follow.  Start with less than 20 or you’ll get overwhelmed.  You can easily un-follow someone who tweets too often or not enough. No wrenching “un-friend” dilemmas here.  You also won’t be inundated by friend requests like when you finally broke down and got on Facebook and were immediately faced with the decision about whether or not to accept requests from two ex boyfriends, your Aunt Sally and your old boss.

3)   Twitter really is different than Facebook.  Facebook is where you go to share photos of your kids and where you might need to weed through someone’s dinner menu to see photos of their kids.  Facebook gives you a newsfeed of what your “friends” are doing.  Twitter gives you a newsfeed of what the people you wish you were friends with are doing.  Hello, Anderson.  And, you can follow them without them having to claim you as a friend in return.  One and a half million people follow Anderson Cooper, so he has no idea who might be stalking him.  But you aren’t really a stalker because you are only reading what he has chosen to put out there for his 1.5 million followers to see.

4)   Everything that interests you is right at your fingertips.  Twitter is a great way to consolidate anything and everything you already checkout online in one tidy little space.  If you are a news junkie like me, you can pick your favorite media outlets and reporters and they magically give you a heads up about what they are reading and writing and talking about.  Between @mikeallen (Politico), @TheFix (Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza) and, of course, @andersoncooper, I can get links to all the articles, columns and videos I need to check out to feel in the loop.  Most people are not real news junkies like me, but If you are a celebrity junkie, you can get teasers from @peoplemag and @star_news and @TMZ to see who is claiming to have photos of whoever’s whatever.  And you get links to all of it.

Now, here’s the bad news…

1)   You’re gonna commit.  Once you check it out, you’ll realize that you want to sign up so you can create a full list of people to follow so you don’t have to keep searching individuals.  It is so much less stalker-like when you are following several people at once. Throw in some news sites and parenting blogs to balance things out.

2)   You may find yourself in some strange new relationships.  You don’t think you will want followers, but you will.  Its not that you’ll expect the world to suddenly be interested in what you have to say, it’s just that not having followers can feel kind of lonely.  It is only human nature to want to be part of the conversation, so when you are reading all of those little quips from @AlecBaldwin (I think it really is him), you’ll have a nagging desire to either respond, retweet or come up with your own clever observations to share with followers, even if they are complete strangers who are probably just internet scam artists phishing for data.

3)    Twitter really is like Facebook.  You will still have to browse through a lot of posts (tweets) that you don’t really care about.  And you will find yourself checking in on Twitter at least as often, so you don’t miss anything really important or really funny or really indulgently stupid.   And, just like you sometimes see people on Facebook post stupid remarks that make you wonder why you were ever friends, once you are on Twitter you will realize that Anderson Cooper is really just another daytime media whore willing to indulge in a Mommy War discussion to drive traffic to his new talk show’s website.  I love Anderson Cooper, but he’s the last person on earth to weigh in on the Mommy Wars.  Did Gloria Vanderbilt really struggle with work-family balance when Anderson was a tot? Come on, Anderson. 

4)   Everything that interests you is right at your fingertips.  Twitter shows you all of the stuff online that you might be remotely interested in.  It also shows you all of the stuff that all of the people you follow are remotely interested in.  That is a lot of stuff.  And you get the links to all of it.

So, to tweet or not to tweet… that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of endless links and often cruel and off-color comedy, or to take arms against a sea of tweets.  And by un-following, end them?  …To sleep no more; for to sleep is to log off.  
…Ay, there’s the rub.

(RT and apologies to @WilliamShakespeare)

Hershey With a Hangover

As summer winds down, I am feeling guilty for not yet taking my kid to Hershey Park, so I resurrected this 2008 memory from my hard drive.

I woke up with a killer headache.  I had only had one glass of wine, but it felt like I had finished off a bottle.   I knew I had to rally because I had promised my daughter and her cousin that we would go to Hershey Park.  We had gone earlier in the summer, but had gotten rained out after half a day.  They were really looking forward to the water park and then the rides.  I got some coffee and figured I’d feel better soon.

When I picked up my niece, my sister noticed that I didn’t look great.  She joked about the late-night “swimming” party at my house the night before.  My mom has a big mouth.  I knew that despite being the hostess of a frolicking good time, I had only had one glass of wine and I was certainly not hung-over.  I assured her that I was fine and looking forward to a day of roller coasters and spinney things that are designed to make you puke.  I lied.

I took the girls to McDonald’s and got myself what I figured was perfect hangover cure food.  I knew it wasn’t a hangover, but I was beginning to suspect bad Chianti as the culprit, so I would treat it with some grease and wait for the caffeine to kick in.

When we got to the park, I took the kids to the water slide area.  It is a fenced-in maze of ladders, fountains and slides.  It would have been nearly impossible to stay together, so I let them run loose in there while I parked myself on a lounge chair beside the only exit.  They could not leave or be snatched away without my knowing it.  I would sit there and let the sun bake out whatever poison was in me, and the kids would be just fine.

That worked for about twenty minutes, at which point I had to go to the restroom.  Perhaps a Sausage-Egg-McMuffin was not the best choice that morning.  It took me another fifteen minutes to find the kids and corral them together to come with me.  They were not happy to be dragged out the most fun place on earth and into a crowded bathroom with wet floors and questionable smells.    Still, I was sick and I had to go.  They were soon back to slipping and sliding.

Ten minutes later, I knew I was going to puke.  There was not time to find the kids.  I reasoned that they were in the fenced area and nobody would be able to pry them away without being clawed to death.  There were lifeguards everywhere, so I was pretty sure they wouldn’t drown.   I made a quick escape and puked my guts out.

I felt worlds better.  I spotted the kids and reclaimed my lounge chair and let the sun continue its healing power.

When the kids had had enough, we got changed.  This also allowed me the time I needed in the restroom.

We headed to the Ferris wheel.  This was the one big thing we didn’t get to do in the rainstorm and they just had to ride it.  By the time we got there, I knew I could not go up.  I contemplated the way it feels at the top of a Ferris wheel, where you can’t really see over the top and the car kind of rocks forward, and it is right at that point that the whole thing stops suddenly, leaving you dangling in a cold sweat.

I felt a wave of nausea but fought it back.  The cars on this particular Ferris wheel were totally enclosed.  There were seat belts and handlebars and there were no openings little bodies could slip through.  When it was our turn to board, I put the kids in, reminded them to never stand up or even lean over while seated.  They were ok, they assured me, so I decided to sit it out.   Once they were on, I knew I had plenty of time to run to the bathroom and be back at the exit gate before they were any the wiser.  I did just that and was back with time to spare.  But, when they got off, they were both in tears.  Their faces were flushed and eyes were swollen and they could barely breathe.  My niece and I had both forgotten how much she hates heights.  She had been terrified the entire ride.  Her fear was quickly embraced by my kid, and they fed off one another’s nightmare.

We got some Dippin Dots and everything was better. 

We headed to the kiddy ride area.  We had learned on the first trip that my niece does not like roller coasters, and after the Ferris wheel experience, she was just as content to stick to the little rides.    This would be great today because the kiddy rides were all contained in one area where I could sit and watch them without having to actually stand in each line with them.  I was not getting any better.

There was one ride that they loved, and they were back in line for their third or fourth time on it when I had to make another run for it.  I told the kids I was running to the bathroom and would be back before the ride ended and to meet me at a particular bench.  I pointed to the bathroom where I was headed and put them back in line.  As I was scurrying away, I had the whole debate in my head about leaving them unattended.  What if someone was stalking us all day and could see that I didn’t have my wits about me.  Perhaps they were laying in wait for just this moment to pounce in and steal the kids.

There was a really nice looking family behind them in line and they had overheard our conversation, where I was headed and the meeting place.  I was pretty sure they wouldn’t let someone else grab my kids.  And, there were loads of kids just running free around the place with no grownups anywhere in sight.  Those kids were far better prey than mine.  My daughter was almost eight and my niece was almost eleven.  Some kids start babysitting at twelve.  I would never personally hire a twelve-year-old babysitter, but I knew people who did.  So, my niece was almost eleven, which was close to almost being able to babysit for someone else.  They would be fine.

After puking I don’t know how many times, I was rinsing my face with sink water and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.    I looked like Hell.  I looked worse than Hell; I looked like a crack junkie.    My face was ghost white with beads of sweat on my nose and forehead.  I wiped them away but they came back immediately.  I was trembling and had huge circles under my eyes.  I knew I didn’t have time to primp.  I had to get back to the kids.

When I approached the ride, I noticed flashing lights and a white vehicle and lots of commotion.  Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.  There was a first aid vehicle blocking the view of my bench and the exit gate for the ride.  I knew immediately that something had happened to my kids.  There had probably been some horrible crash of the stupid 50-year old ride or something.  The park was celebrating its 100th year and I was surmising that some of the kiddy rides had been around since the early days.

I ran to the bench and saw my daughter sitting there with a huge bandage on her knee.  My niece was talking to a uniformed adult and neither of them would make eye contact with me.  My daughter was crying, “Where were you?  I got hurt and we couldn’t find you.  We told them you left us here alone!”

I explained that I was the mother and had only run to the bathroom.  I knew how horrible I looked and decided I could use this as my defense.  They had to see how very sick I was.  I wouldn’t tell them about the wine, just that something had made me very sick.   I panicked and thought through how I would need to explain to my sister that Pennsylvania Social Services had taken custody of both kids and that she would need to come get them.  I thought about the fact that my husband is a lawyer and maybe he could help.  But maybe he wouldn’t want to help because I had abandoned our child in a dangerous place.

My head was spinning when the uniformed adult finally looked up and said that my daughter had just tripped in line and scraped her knee – nothing more than a scrape.    He said that the nice people in line behind the girls had notified first aid and that the kids told them they were to meet me at this bench.  Everyone had done their jobs, just as planned.  Well, other than my kid tripping in line and then screaming that I had left them there alone, everything had gone as planned.

Nobody commented on my junkie-like appearance or criticized my parenting lapse.  No one knew about the glass of wine.  We were in the clear.

I still felt awful, but I couldn’t pack up the kids and head home quite yet.  That would mean a couple of hours behind the wheel, and after the other near-death and near-jail experiences, I was pretty sure driving was not a good choice.  Instead, we made our way toward the front of the park and I let the girls roam in the gift shops that I usually keep off limits.

Having puked up everything, I was starting to get hungry, so we found an air-conditioned restaurant.  I was careful not to eat anything I didn’t want to see again.  I got grilled cheese sandwich and a milkshake – the healthy choice.  My ears were still buzzing, but the pounding headache had let up.  The sweating was still pretty bad, but I was used to it now.   I was finally starting to feel better and decided I could drive.

I bribed the kids with chocolate so they wouldn’t tell my mother or sister all the gory details.  Unfortunately, by the time we got home, the chocolate was gone.  The pact of silence was long forgotten, but details of the terrifying Ferris wheel ride and flashing lights of the first aid truck were not.

Big

Chin held high, I straightened my spine, squeezed in my stomach and thrust my shoulders back. My daughter did the same. We braced against each other and held our breath, waiting for an answer. My husband squinted and considered and finally determined that I was still a smidgeon taller. It was an empty victory that I knew would not last long, but I relished the victory nonetheless.

Just eleven years ago, she was weighing heavy in my belly, making it impossible for me to stand completely upright. She was so big the doctors insisted on inducing her birth 10 days early. Even then, she was almost 9 pounds. She started in the 95th percentile and has stayed there ever since.

Since she was little, her appearance has been the first thing people notice and comment on. It’s only natural – people comment on what they see: “What a pretty dress.” “Look at those blonde curls.” “My, how you’ve grown.” It is natural, but strange since we’d never say such things to an adult: “Nice to meet you. You sure are tall.” As she got older, the dresses were replaced with jeans and the hair naturally darkened, but she kept getting bigger. So the dominant commentary she has heard throughout her life has always centered on her size.

I’m just as guilty as the rest of the world, perhaps more so. Unlike stangers, I know there are many more interesting measures of her true growth that are actually worth talking about. She is a veracious reader and analytical thinker. Ever since she saw the final Harry Potter movie, she has been re-reading the books and critiquing where the movies fell short as well as where they triumphed. She is also developing a real sense of humor and understanding of irony. Her must-see TV is MAD Magazine, which has inspired her to start writing her own parodies. She loves music, but increasingly turns away from the main-stream trashy bubble-gum-pop in favor of deeper, more soulful broodings of bands like Cold Play and The Script. She is trying a new sport – lacrosse. And, she recently discovered that she likes sushi, mushrooms and pickles (but not all at once).

While you might pick up on some of her underlying personality complexities from her non-trendy wardrobe choices, shaggy hair and quiet demeanor, you can’t help but talk about her size. I can’t either. She hasn’t even started 5th grade and she can look me square in the eye. She is taller than some of my friends. While last summer we could still share flip-flops, her feet are now a full two sizes bigger than mine. She is big. Giant. Mammoth.

Fortunately, she has always been pretty comfortable being bigger than other kids her age. I am the one who has had trouble. She hears, “Wow, you are really tall.” Then she goes about her business of playing with a sense of triumph and success in doing her job of growing. But I am left standing there to field the follow-up questions: “Where does she get her height?” “How tall do you think she’ll be?” “What are you feeding her?”

No, we do not have a tall, handsome milkman. While my husband is a “normal” 5’11”, his dad is 6’3” so maybe she takes after him? I guess I should be thankful that she doesn’t take after my dad’s mother who was barely 4’10”. If she were tiny, would we all be talking about that? I do not have a magic crystal ball that will predict how tall she’ll get, but if you do, please tell me! And, no, I did not feed her excessive hormones. I followed the organic milk and hormone-free meat rulebook adopted by my generation. But as much as we like to feel good about the choices we make, it didn’t slow her growth a bit.

That is ok, because it is pretty great to be tall. I’ve always wanted to be tall. I can only imagine the confidence you must feel when you walk into a room and look down at people’s scalps instead of up their noses. Yes, there must be an immediate sense of superiority that comes with stature. Maybe that is why they call it stature. I want my daughter to have what I never could, regardless of any amount of hard work and determination. I want her to have better views at concerts, to be able to reach the top shelf without shimmying up onto the counter, to buy jeans without having to have them altered. I want her to be a professional beach volleyball player. Yes, it would require me to shuttle her to tournaments in all of the world’s tropical playgrounds, but I would do that for my little giant.

So as much as I used to worry about her being big, I now worry about her not being big. I’m starting to wonder what will happen to her sense of identity if she stops growing sooner rather than later. What happens when your whole life you’ve heard, “You are tall,” but then you actually cap out at 5’2” or 5’3”? Will she feel like a failure for not living up to the expectations of “big” that she’s heard her whole life? What will happen to my, I mean her beach volleyball dreams?

I guess it will be OK because, like all of us, there is so much more to her than meets the eye. Her height, like her hair or clothes, may be what you notice first, but is not what you will remember about her. You are far more likely to remember the way she made you look at something from a different angle or laugh at something you hadn’t noticed. You’ll observe her acute sense of empathy and see she is more interested in seeking justice than power. All-and-all, you are far more likely to sense her gentle vulnerability than her towering strength.

And because of that vulnerability, I will continue to do the one sure thing I can do to bolster her confidence in a world where appearances do indeed matter, but don’t really tell you much. Yes, for her, my gentle little giant, I will continue to be short. No matter what else happens in her life, she can rest assured that she will always be taller than me. It is the least a mother can do.

The next time we stand back-to-back to be measured, I will relax my posture and finally let her be taller. I‘m just not quite ready to do it yet.