What have you done lately?

“What have you done lately?” was Mrs. Anderson’s favorite question. As my high school Western Civilization teacher, she’d pose that question to the class after expounding on the achievements of some child king or teenage military hero.

“What have you done lately” (drawn out emphasis on the ‘you’) she’d ask us with a toothy Cheshire grin, a playfully accusatory look peering over her bifocals. I suppose we were meant to feel already underaccomplished at age 16 or merely that much more impressed with the exploits of these historical figures. The way she said it made it a fun and highly imitate-able catchphrase, and we’d mock mimic her in the hallways between classes.

But that question, “what have you done lately?” with its implied response of “not as much as that guy” has continued, for better or worse, to ring in my ears since then; and as I get older, the list of people more accomplished than me “at my age” has exploded. Some day it will include presidents and Nobel laureates.

I should feel pretty self satisfied. I’m well liked and respected where I work; I have a loving family and good health. But there are just too many highly accomplished people around there messing this up, making me feel underachieving in comparison. Facebook is no help. Last week, I was reminded through this oh so helpful platform that two old friends had just published books and another was interviewed as an expert on NPR.

Why do their accomplishments accomplish making me feel so underaccomplished? Does everyone feel this way?

Probably not highly evolved and self actualized people. Probably not people who never expected much in the first place. I suppose my occasional self-disappointment malaise is the downside of growing up with loving and encouraging parents who told me I could (should?) achieve the world.

I’ve read that, despite the gloomy weather, Denmark has the happiest people of any country. Why? Not the generous social programs and high standard of living. The happy-ologists report that the Danes are happier because they don’t expect a whole lot and then are quite satisfied with outcome.

But I did not grow up in Denmark. I grew up in a corner of Horatio Alger’s Keeping-Up-with-the Joneses America filled with doctors and lawyers. And with a teacher who kept asking, “What have you done lately”?

Ahhh... Boston

This morning I learned that, according to a new report, Boston is among top most expensive cities in the US. Not really a newsflash, but definitely add that to the pile of things we won’t miss if we move.

Here’s a little something to throw on the pile of things we will miss if we move:

Last night, Colin picked up Caleb and I from daycare/work and instead of heading home we decided to take a little walk. Government Center, the neighborhood in which I work, is wasteland of Soviet-inspired architecture and concrete, so we started out our walk with low expectations.

But this is Boston, so after a few minutes we found ourselves approaching the State House, just in time to duck in from the rain. And what a place to “duck” into! Where else can you take a post workday walk and end up walking the exquisite gold and marble halls of a building as old as our nation?

Once inside, Caleb made an enthusiastic beeline for the marble steps and, chasing him, we found ourselves smack in the middle of a session of state Congress. The dense fog of power hit us before we could even see the politicians roaming the halls, looking important, schmoozing and shaking hands. The hall is open to the public, but was full mostly of tall, tanned and graying pols oozing self-importance. Given that we were accompanied by a quite adorable baby, we were the target of some of this well honed schmoozing and were greeted with gratuitous smiles and chummy comments about Caleb like, “the reps are getting taller each year. Har har har!” I guess kissing babies is kind of part of the job description.

With the rain clearing and having had our fill of vicarious political excitation, we exited to the closest park, the Boston Commons, a 50 acre rolling expanse home to ponds, swan-shaped boats, ornate gardens and live performances, which also happens to be the oldest park in the country. There’s an old timey carousel for goodness sake, which gave Caleb a good old fashioned thrill.

Our stomachs grumbling, we walked, passed the balcony upon which the Declaration of Independence was first read and the and storied Faneuil Hall, and landed in…. Italy.

You can’t throw a rock in the Italian North End of Boston, without hitting a quaint Italian ristorante covered in vines and candles and filled with the din of Italian chatter and the aroma of fresh made sauce. Walking only a block, we passed probably a dozen enticing places, landed on a tiny trattoria with outdoor seating and proceeded to enjoy some of the freshest, most flavorful pasta this side of Naples. Dinner never lasts long with a toddler, so we soon found ourselves roaming the streets inevitably landing in one of the many Gelateria to get a cold treat for the rest of our warm walk to the train station to catch the 7:30 train back to Medford.

Keith, the ticket taker who jokes with Caleb and gives him old tickets to play with during our normal commute home, was working the later train and looked surprised to see us. “You’re coming home late today.” “Impromptu date night.” we replied as we descended to stairs to our short walk home.

File all of that under “what I’ll miss about Boston if we move.”

Talkin bout a resolution

At our house we call it “pulling a Trader Joes.” This is the phenomenon of getting inordinately excited and committed to a new, seemingly life changing idea and then watching it die as life’s commitments get in the way. It’s why we simultaneously have a growing mutli-billion dollar weight loss industry in a country with a more fat people than you can shake a Nutrishake at. There’s no threat that the weight loss gurus will succeed their way out of business. Not with all of us quitters out there.

We call this a “Trader Joes” because Colin and I vowed to do our shopping there after a particularly enrapturing experience with inexpensive prepared food and bizarrely friendly check out staff. Sure, it was much less convenient than our normal grocery store, but what a better experience! “We should always come here!”

Despite our initial enthusiasm, we repeated the experience exactly zero times. Stop and Shop was walkable and cheap, and we’re lazy.

For this blog, I vowed publicly, even if no one was listening, to write a little bit each day. Lately, I’ve averaged one post a month. Pathetic.

I know the root of this problem. Instead of confidently posting a quick description or rant and hitting “publish,” I expound on an issue at length and from all angles I can think of. I fear (but fail at) posting something that might offend or fail a grammar test and rework it. I won’t post something unless I like it, and I’m paralytically critical of myself. All this stymies progress and deters me from even starting most days.

So, the point is in order to reach a goal, you need to bite off reasonable chunks. I go to the gym pretty regularly – but only because it is downstairs from my office. If I’m not entirely in the mood, I still go and just do a short workout. There are no “transportation costs” allowing me easy excuses. On busy days, I do excuse myself, but overall it’s part of my routine because it’s manageable.

So, I’m going to make this blogging thing more manageable by doing more regular short posts. Every once in a while I’ll probably expound on something at length. (I’m restraining myself right now from delving into all the other factors that make goals attainable: having someone hold you accountable, early and observable success, interim reachable goals, making the tasks something you enjoy…). Maybe the invisible reader will hold me to this new task…

Beach day

This weekend, being desperate for a respite from the heavy and sticky heat, the family took a short trip to a small lake near our house to dip our overheated bodies in some cool water. Less than a mile from our house, Sandy beach is the size of large backyard, and looks over a tree-lined lake filled with small fish and dotted with sailboats. There are shaddy paths around the lake for bikers and runners and just behind the “beach” is a playground and soccer field. We congratulated ourselves for living in such close proximity to such a find.

When we arrived early in the morning the beach was fairly empty, giving it the feel of a campground oasis. There was a family of Brazilians playing in the water and a grumpy old groundskeeper cleaning up Canadian geese poop, who treated us to his musings on illegal immigration. (“It’s just like the Canadian geese. We let them in and protect them and then all they do is shit all over the place.”)

We shook this off and proceeded to cajole our water-averse son into the refreshing lake water.
Caleb remained stubborn in his anti-water stance and stood watch at the shore as dad and I frantically tried to make our case for its merits.

“Look Caleb, the other kids are having so much fun in the water!”

“See? Mommy’s feet are wet and it feels SOOOO good!”

“Look it’s your favorite toy boat sailing on the water! Come catch it!”

All of this was met with furious and defiant head shakes.

The whole scene was described (unprompted) by the curmudgeonly groundskeeper thusly: “Your wife is going to turn that child into a sissy.”

I suppose he would rather I had thrown him in, trial by ordeal-style, to see if he would sink. “Too bad about that kid. But he sure was brave.”

Oblivious to the name calling, Caleb actually had a fun time standing at the shore, screaming at the sailboats and birds and telling the other children that the ball we were playing with was “mine!”

All this is huge progress compared to our last visit to the beach, in which Caleb spent his time either screaming to go home or in the safe cocoon of a beach tent. Next visit we are hoping to actually meet the water. Someday he may even swim in it!

Alternate Realities and the Art of Happiness

Not just because of recent island-based, sci-fi, TV dramas, I’ve been thinking a lot of alternate realities. How the decisions we make shoot us down one path or another. Like if you had only gotten into that creative writing seminar, you’d have a plum reporting job, or if you’d gone on that camping trip to the Rockies, you’d have a different life partner. Would your life be better? Would you be any happier in those realities?

Or would whatever it is that makes you “you,” push you to pretty much where you are now with only slight differences? This is the “course correction” hypothesis. Sure, maybe you’d be with a different mate, but he’d share pretty much the same characteristics as your current spouse, given those are the qualities you, in all your “you-ness,” are drawn to. Is your fate pretty much sealed by a combination of your personal proclivities and upbringing?

Could it be that some number-crunching social scientist, given enough data on the circumstances of our birth and our abilities, could predict with reasonable accuracy where we’d end up. Born with an aptitude for science, introverted relational style and of upper-income parents with liberal politics and a connection to a religious community, will end up…… (peep peep, chug chug, chrunch chrunch ….) in a stable relationship working as a chemical engineer and vacationing in the Berkshires. Maybe you’d deviate a bit from this ending, but not much. Or would you?

Maybe there is truly enough randomness over a lifetime to put you farther off that course. Could be that the randomness in our lives accumulates to offer vastly different alternate futures. I’m sure Malcolm Gladwell could write a convincing essay on either option.

None of this is anything new. The debate between chance and choice has been the stuff of religious and philosophical musings (and late night pot-induced dorm room rap sessions) and the meat of great novels for centuries. What I’ve become obsessed with is wondering is if I’d be happier in any of these alternative realities.

My husband likes to remind me that I suffer from the “grass is always greener” syndrome, and this is unequivocally true. Objectively, I’m a pretty lucky gal. I have a reasonably fulfilling, low-stress and high-paid job, a loving husband, healthy baby and all around supportive friends and family. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking I could have it better, if only…

You see, every once in a while I run into those people. You know, the kind that ooze self contentment and emanate joy. They love their lives and feel lucky every day. They smile at strangers with actual sincerity, and brush off frustrations easily. Is that because the fates, or the consequences of their birth, or whatever drives their life’s trajectory put them in the most optimal outcome for them? Might they be less happy in another job, city, family? Or are they the types who no matter where they land would have a sunny disposition?

I need to know this because, like I said, I’m lucky. But I don’t ooze joy. And I want to. I want to be one of those people who feel happy to be exactly where they are. These people fascinate and frustrate me. Are they this way because of their perspective or their position. And which is easier to control? A new perspective or a new position? I guess that depends on who and where you are.

Victims of our own what now?

Victims of our own what now? Success. Yes. Success

Let me explain. In the last week, I’ve read/seen three news items that have led me to examine more critically my tendency to condemn the modern and to romanticize the past.

You see, the phrase “Mo’dernity, Mo’problems” has always wrung true to my ears. I’m quick to point out all the ways in which new technology robs us of our possible virtues and to look towards “indigenous” cultures for guidance on how I’m supposed to be living my life – how I’m supposed to parent and eat and commune with something larger than myself.

On Monday I read an article in Foreign Policy arguing that the organic, local, slow food movement is the wrong answer for most of the world’s poorest. In fact, we should be grateful for the newer and safer fertilizers and pesticides, whose antecedents sparked a food revolution making it possible to feed the world several times over and to endure the inevitable periodic droughts and floods. The author points out that the poorest of subsistence farmers couldn’t eat more organically, locally or prepare food more slowly than they do but that this is thankless, arduous and sometimes fruitless work which cements their place at the margin of existence.

Last night I saw a PBS special on the vaccine controversy. Despite protecting the population from 16 known diseases, many of them killers, vaccines have recently become a bogeyman for the more organically inclined and parents of autistic children looking desperately for answers. And these outcries have been stubbornly resistant to an overwhelming preponderance of evidence contradicting their assertions.

On Tuesday I read an article in Harpers about the cadre of die-hards dedicated to uncovering the science showing that EMF waves, mainly from cell phones, are leading to a proliferation of brain tumors.

We make all these arguments: pesticides bad, cell phones bad, vaccines bad, from a place of relative comfort and near total amnesia about the original problems that these advances made disappear. The terrifyingly indiscriminate nature of the polio scourge and the physical ache of hunger are simply not a part of our collective consciousness. Cell phones certainly haven’t helped feed the hungry and heal the sick, but they have connected us in a way that is easily taken for granted. Gone are the days of wondering why your dinner companion (or even child) is late or stopping long distance phone calls before they get “too expensive.” Would we go back to a world without cell phones?

This is not to diminish the very real concerns with the environmental impact of chemical agents on our food and therefore bodies and the unknown long-term threat of new electronic technology. The fear of vaccines causes autism is probably the best example of outsized concern with a perceived threat compared to a proven benefit. But even here, consumer vigilance has steadily made vaccines safer.

I guess I’m just taking time and see the world through an antique monocle and to be grateful for all those things which I now have the luxury to complain about.

Wondering about Weaning

My son is now nearly 15 months old; technically, no longer a baby but a toddling toddler with a toothy smile and a growing vocabulary of, well… not exactly English, but he gets his point across. It’s kind of a baby-English creole. “Ka” is cup and “ga” is milk and “ka ka” is cracker. He calls me “pa pa,” but I know what he means. Point is, he’s a little person now.

Maybe that’s why I’m starting to feel a bit sheepish about the fact that he’s still nursing.

He loves it. I love it. It’s great for him and a sure fire way to help him sleep. I don’t see it ending any time soon as he hates milk (of the non-human variety) and has never soothed himself with either a pacifier or a bottle. That boy is a purist.

But he’s the only kid over 10 months still nursing in his daycare, and when we nurse in public, people are starting to make comments. “Oh. So, he’s still nursing?” (attempt at self-censoring, but ultimately...) “He’s getting kind of big for that, huh?” My husband looks at me worryingly now when we nurse and tells me that “we” don’t want him to be nursing past 2 years of age. I nod reflexively in agreement. It does seem weird. But why?

Is it because breasts are so sexualized in this culture that when our little ones start acting more childlike than babylike, breastfeeding just seems a bit odd? Is it because we’re simply not accustomed to the image? Or, alternatively is it because nursing toddlers is not what we humans are meant to be doing? Stripped of our cultural taboos and expectations, what would be the “natural age” of weaning anyway?

I did a little digging and comparisons with our closest genetic relatives, who we can assume are freed of our cultural constraints, seems to indicate that the “natural” age of weaning is actually quite late by our standards. Here are some of the arguments:

• Larger mammals nurse their offspring until they have quadrupled their birth weight. In humans, quadrupling of birth weight occurs between 2.5 and 3.5 years, usually.
• For chimpanzees and gorillas, the two primates closest in size to humans and also the most closely genetically related, nurse their offspring for six times the length of gestation. In humans, that would be: 4.5 years.
• Non-human primates (monkeys and apes) are weaned at the same time they were getting their first permanent molars. In humans, that would be: 5.5-6.0 years.

For those who balk at inter-species comparisons, other research has found that in societies where children are allowed to nurse "as long as they want" they usually self-wean, with no arguments or trauma, between 3 and 4 years of age. I found one study that looked at American women who practiced extended breastfeeding and “child-led” weaning, and it found that the average age their youngest child weaned was 3.0 years old (older children were weaned earlier due to the arrival of a baby sibling).

But this is clearly not the norm in the U S of A. The American Academy of Pediatricians officially recommends breast feeding until the age of one, even though the World Health Organization recommends at least two years of breast feeding for women worldwide. Could it be that Western cultural expectations and practices are out of sync with the natural order of things? Most likely.

But maybe that’s OK.

We generally don’t live the lives of our more nature-dependent ancestors and global cohabitants. Earlier weaning allows women to assert themselves more freely in the workplace and to socialize more flexibly with friends and family, and the science shows that the health benefits of breast feeding taper off as the baby gets older. I guess at the end of the day, it should just be a choice.

But it doesn’t seem so much like a choice to me. My sister, who breast fed her son for 26 months, suffered serious derision, disdain and disgust from people, including those who are meant to support and love her unconditionally most – her family. And she’s fortunate enough to live in a community of yoga-practicing, organic baby-food making, co-sleeping moms, who generally support the practice.

So, where does that leave me? People ask me when I plan on weaning him, and it makes me feel like a bit of a flake, because I don’t have any “plans” per se. But I can’t really picture doing it anytime soon. Complete strangers will interfere in very few aspects of your life, but the decision to, or not to, and for how long to breast feed, like so many parenting decisions, is treated as fair game for intervention. I have to admit, I fear those interactions.

I guess I should ignore all that noise and make the best decision for my baby and my family. But, as my frantic search for parenting guidance from friends, books and the Web indicates, I don’t always have a good handle on what that is. I like to trust my instincts, but it’s hard to ignore the loud and pervasive messages, which seem to contradict my gut. It’s hard to swim upstream. But I guess that’s what your kids look for you to do sometimes.